Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 8/21/24 LIVE FROM DNC: Obama's Tell Dems To Fall In Line, RFK Trump Endorsement Incoming?, BP Reacts To Bernie

Episode Date: August 21, 2024

Saagar, Ryan and Emily discuss Bernie and billionaires at DNC, Obama's tell Dems to fall in line, exclusive report on DNC delegate falsely accused of violence, VIPs stuck in line at DNC cluster, RFK endorsement of Trump reportedly incoming, and viral dancing Dem Parker Short joins BP.    To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.com/   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus.

So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? and subscribe today. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir.

Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This kind of starts that a little bit, man. We met them at their homes. We met them at the recording studios. Stories matter and it brings a face to it. It makes it real. It really does.

It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, guys. Ready or Not 2024 is here, and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. Hello, everybody. Good afternoon. I guess that's what it is now. Welcome to day three of our DNC coverage. We are live from Chicago. Before we get to who our wonderful guest is here,

let's get into a little bit of the logistics. We're going to do a recap of everything that happened last night. Unfortunately, Crystal's flight was massively delayed, but she will be here tomorrow, we promise. Oh, wow. Okay, I'm actually listening. He's watching himself. You will be shocked to learn. Watching myself. Just got caught.

Got absolutely caught here on stream. These are the perils of live streaming. So, first of all, thank you very much, of course, to our friends at Barstool Chicago, specifically the Dog Walk podcast. Shout out to our man, Eddie. Everyone go subscribe if you are a fan of Chicago sports. So as we said, Chris will be here tomorrow.

We're going to do a live stream. I think for at least a live reaction and all of that from here in the studio that we'll be able to get to all of you. And of course, during the day, we're actually going to be at the DNC filming some exclusive content. But of course, we've got the incredible CounterPoints team here, Ryan Grimm and Emily Jashinsky. We've all been holding down the fort and we're having a great time. But with that, why don't we introduce our guest?

This is Parker Short. So, Parker, tell us a little bit about who you are before we remind the audience of where they might have seen you before. Well, hey, my name is Parker Short. So, Parker, tell us a little bit about who you are before we remind the audience of where they might have seen you before. Well, hey, my name is Parker Short. I'm the chairman of the Young Democrats of Georgia, and I'm a delegate from our fourth congressional district. Okay. What is that? It's just east of Atlanta, so it's most of DeKalb County, bits of Rockdale and Gwinnett. They just keep redrawing our lines. Who is that? Hank Johnson? Hank Johnson. Yep. Nation's leading advocate for court reform. But it's an important area.

It is. It's a super important area. You know, I like to—Dekalb is just about the most Democratic county in Georgia. You know, I was born and raised there, up in North Dekalb, in a city named after a Confederate general. It used to be all red. So it is Dekalb. It is. I always thought it was DeKalb.

Here we say Dekalb. I hear it in Illinois. Somebody said DeKalb. It is. I've always thought it was DeKalb. Here we say DeKalb. I hear it in Illinois. Somebody said DeKalb. I was like, oh. But no, when I was growing up, you know, in high school, I had all, you know, Republican state rep, Republican state senator, Republican congressman. And then I worked for John Ossoff's 2015 campaign or 2017 campaign as an intern. And I was just a little kid.

Started knocking doors, started High School Democrats Club. And now there are no more Republicans in North DeKalb. Interesting. So, yeah. You scared them away. Yeah, you scared high school Democrats club, and now there are no more Republicans in North DeKalb. Interesting. So, yeah. You scared them away. Yeah, you scared them away. I think you might have scared them away with some of your dancing moves. So, Parker, that is how we're just going to have to introduce you to the cat here.

My friend Mac, Producer Mac, can we keep this up, please, and put this up there on the screen. Emily was very excited when she got a DM from you. Parker, yeah. Rare. Yeah, that's right. screen Emily was very excited when she got a DM from you yeah it was the first time a male in to Emily actually resulted in this is Parker you guys What song is this? What is it? Not Like Us by Kendrick Lamar. That's in the arena this week, right? That is in the arena. Parker, what night was that? So that was...

Just by how he's so hyped. That was when Kamala came to Atlanta for her first rally big announcing. And, you know, it was extraordinarily exciting because it started off with Stacey Abrams, who's registered 800,000 voters in the state of Georgia. Then our two senators, John Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, who flipped the state blue and allowed Joe Biden to achieve everything in his legislative agenda. And then we had Megan Thee Stallion. And then they tell me that Kamala Harris is coming out and they play one of my favorite songs. So I'm excited for the next generation. And of course, I was having fun with all my Georgia Democrat friends at GSU. So you were pumped up. All right.

So Parker, young guy, tell us, Michelle Obama, one of the things we're going to talk about, talks about the feeling of a pit in their stomach yesterday. Kind of a little subtle dig at Joe Biden there since he literally was. I believe she didn't even say his name, which we'll get to in a little bit. So then as somebody, part of the activist faithful in the state of Georgia, obviously a critical state for Joe Biden, barely won it by what, some 10,000 votes? 11,779. Oh, wow. Look at this kid. I'm dealing with a professional over here. A young Ryan Grimm. This is a young Ryan Grimm. A young Ryan Grimm. Also, let's put Parker in context, too. You were telling us earlier that your journey was, what,

Bernie, Warren, Biden? Where do you put your politics? Well, I like to consider myself a progressive, whatever that word may mean. I am a fan of the show, I will say, I tell my friends to watch it. The only, my favorite news is the PBS news hour. I'm breaking points. Um, so, you know, I definitely, I'm a, I'm a union Democrat. I'm a Southern Democrat, but, um, you know, I, I voted for Bernie in 2020, you know? Um, so, you know, I definitely consider myself a little bit more on the left. But, you know, I want to get things done. OK, so tell us then about what it was like for you and all the people around you in the interim.

After the debate, you can speak freely now. He's gone. I know. Don't worry about it. All right. So like still the president. What was it like? Yeah. Well, you know, for our purposes, he's not gone. Yeah. All right. So so what was it like? What was it like in that, what, three-week period or whatever after the debate? How were you guys feeling? And then talk to us about what it was like when Kamala became or when Joe Biden dropped out. Kamala is a presumptive nominee. Were you guys excited? Like talk to us about that feeling, relief, et cetera.

Oh, yeah. So I'll just start with the debate. Look, I got invited to the Georgia Democrat debate party. Yeah. And I did not go. I was, you know, not as a slight. I went to the Gwinnett Young Democrats debate first. I watched the first five, ten minutes.

I watched the first five, ten minutes. And I was like, I need to go home. I need to go home. And you know what? I love and respect Joe Biden. He has been a great public servant. He was elected as the youngest senator in the country. He's had a very interesting journey. And you know what? I love and respect Joe Biden. He has been a great public servant. He was elected as the youngest senator in the country. He's had a very interesting journey.

But you know what? Thank God that he had the political sense to step aside and put his country first. Because Trump has put his party and himself over his country and the Constitution. And Joe Biden knew that he wasn't the candidate and it wasn't the time. And I respect the man and push comes to shove. There's no way I was voting for Donald Trump. But, you know, after that debate, I'm like, okay, what's, what's going to happen? You know, cause I was a delegate and, uh, we were, we were wringing our hands for a couple of weeks and I would have, look, if you would have asked me three

months ago, if, uh, Democrats were going to win Georgia, I would have been very frank with you. You know, I would have said, no, I love Georgia politics. And, uh,. And I didn't think we were setting ourselves up to win. We are now setting ourselves up to win. Interesting. Yeah. Can I ask a question on that? Because I've been reading some conservative media this morning even, but throughout the week, saying that, you know, every convention, obviously, we all understand this is super stage managed. It's meant to look, meant to put the party looking like it has the most hype as humanly possible.

And it's you know, they're kind of used to doing that. They've done it before. So some people in conservative media are like that magic that Michelle Obama referenced yesterday. It's not real. It's a sugar high during the week of the convention. It sounds to me like what you're saying, Parker, is and this has been my impression just walking through the arena yesterday. It actually does feel real. It feels quite electric to me. People seem genuinely excited about Kamala Harris,

which is interesting because just a couple months ago, people were worried about Kamala Harris. What's the change? Well, you know what? I will say, like, as a Georgia Democratic activist or whatever you want to call it, she has made every single right decision. You know, I have young friends in Georgia politics,

you know, in the Democrat Party, just about the most far left and most far right person you're going to find in the Georgia Democrat Party. They both about jumped out of their seats when Tim Walz was in choice. You know, I think she has made so many wonderful choices throughout her campaign. We've got 24 campaign offices in the state of Georgia.

I love her staff in the state of Georgia. They are really doing a good job. Isn't it Biden's staff? Isn't just a Biden. Yeah. But you know, Biden's staff, like they had, they had hired Quentin folks who ran Warnock's campaign to be a deputy campaign manager. So they had a lot of Georgia focus and all the folks that we had on the ground have been doing it for years. Okay. Look, I love Stacey Abrams, but too many folks came from out of state on that election. You know, you want people who have been there doing it and, uh, you know, they have such a great campaign. They're out there knocking doors. And as I said, 11,779 votes made the difference that time. That's a field margin. That is a field

margin in a presidential race. And the way that, well, that's basically, you know, the energy and folks out there knocking doors. When you got volunteers like me who, when I was a little kid, I went and knocked tens of thousands of doors for John Ossoff and my state house and state Senate candidate. And, you know, uh, I organized my little kid, I went and knocked tens of thousands of doors for John Ossoff in my state house and state Senate candidate. And, you know, I organized my high school Democrats club and we knocked more than 300,000 doors for this guy that ran for state house up in North DeKalb. And you know what? He won by 1400 votes. And then Lucy McBath won the seat that John Ossoff lost by 3000 votes. So it shows that you can really fight and you can get in there and make the difference. A field margin is basically like, are you out there?

Are you doing the work? Are you organized? And look, we're making the difference. And I will just say, I think the most important thing is down ballot candidates. I love to tell people, who's your state house rep? Who's your state senator? Who's your county commissioner? Because that is really what impacts your life.

And when you get engaged with those elections, we've got young folks running for state house and state senate in Georgia. One of my best friends is 23. He's a middle school math teacher in Atlanta, and he's running against an anti-education Republican. And the reason I became president is because I was his vice president. He stepped down. I'm going to let that slide back. Yeah. Because I like you, Parker.

But go ahead, Ryan. Yeah. I'm curious. You know, we hear a lot about Gaza and how that affects young people. Yeah. What was the case when it came to Gaza and young people's support in Georgia for Biden? And has that changed with Harris? And where do you think it will go if we don't get a ceasefire deal and the slaughter just continues, which looks like everybody's, oh, deal's right around the corner.

We'll believe it when we see it. Yeah, exactly. And it's truly just heartbreaking what is going on. And I recently graduated from the University of Michigan, and there was a lot of campus protests there. And I was just heartbroken by the situation. I have not felt that it has been handled well. And I think Joe Biden particularly has evolved in the past couple months in his handling of it. But I have to respect and appreciate when Kamala came into the spotlight, when she came into her own, and she has the ability to make these decisions. Before her rally in Detroit, in Michigan, where 78% of the city of Dearborn, 100,000 voters,

went and voted uncommissioned, she met with the uncommitted movement before her rally. She's hearing us. Look, I'll respect Joe Biden. He wouldn't have done that. He wouldn't have done that. And she is out here. She is trying. And Trump is doing the exact opposite. I think if you want a candidate that at all values human rights in the Middle East, I think Kamala is a clear choice because Trump just tried to nuke the deal by calling them and pressuring Israel, which is not only extraordinarily illegal, but undiplomatic. He's literally trying to stop peace from being found. So Parker, I want to ask you, because you have got intimate knowledge of the state of Georgia,

you're talking about those 11,000 votes. Who are the swing? What's like the swing demographic this time around? Because for us looking in, it's really interesting, right? Because we've got Brian Kemp, pretty popular governor. Raffensperger survives despite Trump coming in against him. But clearly there's a swingish, there is a Kemp common voter out there. There are 50,000 voters in the state of Georgia that voted for Brian Kemp and Raphael Warnock at the same time. That's crazy to me. That is crazy. Who are they?

They're the wine moms up in Dunwoody that I've been canvassing. They're the soccer time. That's crazy to me. That is crazy. Who are they? Yeah. They're the wine moms up in Dunwoody that I've been canvassing. You know, they're the soccer moms. They're the voters that aren't really engaged or folks that turn out or folks that don't fill out their ballot all the way. Okay. You know, it's very strange how it works, but in 2020, the candidate got the most votes in the Senate runoff. Wasn't also for Warnock. It was the Republican candidate for public service commissioner, Bubba McDonald. And you know why? Because his name is Lauren Bubba McDonald. And there's a Lauren Bubba McDonald Jr. Yeah, it's Georgia. That's Georgia Republican. He got more votes than anybody because Republicans in the state of Georgia, we're not going to go out and vote for, you know, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler,

who truly represent elitism in this country. And they abandoned our state. I mean, they're focused on stock prices instead of Georgia. David Perdue had the greatest ad in political history. It said, officially exonerated in his ad. Oh, is that beautiful? What was that? Incredible messaging. He's the dollar store guy. He was accused of... Dollar General.

Dollar General. I apologize. I get mine mixed up. Insider trading. Officially exonerated. Well, I think this is a perfect. Insider trading. So I have a question. Well, I think this is a perfect time for us to take some questions from the chat. Oh, okay. I'm going to probably wrap our friend up here. Yeah, I just, while Sagar's looking for a question from the chat,

I just want to ask because it seems to me that there is an element of Kamala Harris going from arguably, actually statistically, the most unfavorable vice president in modern history to somebody who now has, as we just talked about, this really legitimate energy around her. It's real. Yeah. Can you tell us, is part of that just because

young people like yourself are so excited that you don't have to vote for Joe Biden? Is that what's driving some of the enthusiasm here? Or is there something about Kamala Harris? I don't think it's just that. As I said, I think Kamala has made every single right decision since she stepped in the spotlight. I've been very impressed by the way she's managing her campaign. But, you know, it's not just about Joe Biden.

I think the truth of it is the fact that he stepped down shows something in American politics, shows that he was willing to put himself aside and look for something new, look for something fresh. And voters respect that, young and old. I think everybody is excited. I don't think this is a sugar high. You know, somebody asked me this question the other day, and I like to think, you know, we had to go watch Joe Biden go up there and not be able to talk to Donald Trump on abortion rights. Got it. I saw one question in here that said, how do we ask questions? But yeah, tell people how to do that. We are taking our questions from our locals, premium subscribers. Of course, how do we ask questions? Wrong chat. But yeah, tell people how to do that. We are taking our questions from our locals, premium subscribers.

Of course, we do have that promotion going on right now for one month free trial, breakingpoints.com. DNC free is the promo code. So the one question that the chat has for you is, is Parker, how do you get young people excited about politics? Not everybody is a nerd like you knocking doors. That's no knock,

by the way, because I was just like you. I'm a very proud nerd. I worked hard for my public policy degree, but I got interested in it at a young age because I lost my dad. He was in the labor union that kept my family out of debt. I knew what social security was because Survivor Social Security, third Wednesday of every month, that's when we could go to the grocery store. Not everybody has that lived experience of knowing the impact of public policy in your community. But you know what? I know everybody drives around in their city and sees something they don't like, sees something that's inefficient. My favorite saying is, my grandpa said this on his deathbed. The nurse asked him, are you allergic to anything? He said, incompetence. And I look

around government and I see too much incompetence and inefficiency, especially in local government. And if you want to see change, if you want things to be better, you can affect that change. I know a 23-year-old running for state house in Georgia and he's going to win. Let me just back that point up. I was raised by a single mom on SSDI, which is a derivative of social security and food stamps. And it was quite visible, exactly. You could see, okay, the government has done a thing, and our life is better today. And a couple weeks later, your life's a little worse. Government does the thing again.

Your life's better for a couple weeks. You got the Nutri-Grain bars, like the good ones. Yeah. The name brand. All right, now that we've got our SSI. Yeah, but you're right. It connects you. It's a joke, it's a joke.

It connects you to the value of government. I agree. No, it's really true. Any last words, Parker? Where can people find you? So look, y'all can find me on Instagram at Parker.Short. I don't really want to be an influencer. I don't really want to do this.

And yet you are. I just want to be an organizer. 41,000 followers on Instagram. I want to keep pushing Georgia forward. There's a lot of progress to be made. Our state's let our people down. And you make up that point, Ryan, about SSDI. When Brian Kemp got elected governor, he changed the standards for Medicaid, specifically peach care, which is for children.

And I lost my health care. And I was a little kid. Oh, don't get me started on Brian Kemp. All right. But, no, thank you all for having me. Go to the Young Dems of GA.org. We're having a convention next weekend in Atlanta. Hey, we'd love to have y'all. We're going to have a lot of great surrogates from the

campaign. A lot of great young folks. Um, although, you know, Chicago got the DNC, uh, Atlanta got the young Democrats of Georgia convention, and I promise you it's going to be far more lit and I'm going to bring the energy. So I hope to see all y'all college students there at Georgia Tech. Get your tickets. Are you going to be dancing? Are you going to be dancing? Anything to get the young people to vote and make a change in their community. I love it.

Matt, can we get the video up there again? Yeah, one last video. One last video. Just a reminder. I mean, if you're going to come in here, we're going to have to rush you. It's so viral, by the way. I mean, it genuinely was funny, and I actually think it's quite sweet. I was just having a good time.

Yeah, look, we're happy for you. Crystal was so excited about this interview. Crystal was so sad she couldn't be here. She loved these videos. Yeah, Crystal sends her best. She's stuck in the airport, and we feel bad for her. All right, Parker, we're going to let you go, my friend. Thanks so much.

Thank you for stopping by. It was really a lot of fun. I enjoyed it. Great, let's take a look at our questions from locals. We are going to take our questions that's me when we get that is exactly you

that's me when the tweezer reprise starts up alright see you dude thank you yeah of course oh yeah take a picture alright

love it alright sweet touch my heart I appreciate y'all yeah see you man I'm going to keep pushing tell them when I said.

Oh, yeah, of course. Okay. All right. All right. Ro Khanna scoop. Parker wanted us to say. I can't help but like the kid. I hate it.

I hate to say it. I cannot help but like the kid. He's a young saga. He's a young saga. No, he's way more impressive than I am. Parker wanted to say this on air. He forgot. But he went up to Ro Khanna yesterday.

Uh-huh. And he said, Ro, I love watching you on Breaking Points. Yeah. Ro replied and said, you are like the 10th young person to tell me that. Yeah. Khanna always tells us that. Isn't that great? Ro tells us that he gets recognized more in airports and even by the Capitol Police, which

I'm still trying to get that one square. By Breaking Points, then on Breaking Points and time he does CNN or any of that. So that's our little ad out of the way. Camp Shane, one of America's longest running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children

was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and re-examining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free

on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. VoiceOver is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal.

It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover, to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it.

Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband. It's a cold case. I've never found the murder of my husband at the cold case. I've never found her.

And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's daughter.

She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never got any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. up a free one month trial for you guys to check it out for free. You can go to breakingpoints.com use promo code DNC free for a free month. You know, you can check it out. You get all of our premium benefits, earlier shows uncut on edited, and you get to chat in our AMA. It's like what

we're doing all week and, you know, check it out and you can cancel on the 29th day. If you feel like it, I wish you would stop saying that, but I'm just so happy that I don't have to do the read that I'm just going to let it go. Griffin's so confident that you will forget to cancel. That's true. Or you will just love it so much that you're like, you know what? I'm keeping this. Okay. Give him a taste. But yeah, we'll start taking some logos questions.

Here we got one for Ryan. For Ryan, do you think that Kamala and Tim Walsh will keep Lena Khan? I think because of the policy agenda that they're rolling out, price gouging, using antitrust, how ridiculously hypocritical would you have to look to get rid of Lena Khan, who would be the person who's responsible for executing the first policy that you rolled out. Yeah, but Reid Hoffman. Wall Street has been, people on Wall Street are so mad at Reid Hoffman.

Oh, really? Elevating this to an issue. You could say that, but also, did I not see the Amex chairman, Ken Chenault, up on the stage last night? No. In like the strangest, weird primetime speech. Producer Mac, you agree.

Put yourself on the camera, Mac. Put yourself up on on the cam you and i were watching and we're like what is this dude doing here the guy he was the that was ken schnauzer mac you explain you explain yeah i i loved the speech yeah inspiring yeah i felt motivated more than ever to support kamala waltz ticket. Right. I just. Watching a 200 millionaire Amex chairman, former Amex chairman, talk about why Kamala is great for business. And I was like, okay. This is a little bit of a preview of some of the things that were in tension yesterday. Let's see.

Chump change compared to Pritzker. Oh, here's a good question. Oh, that was so good. From Carlos Sand. Sagar, did Phil email you? He probably wears clip-ons okay i hate to say it guys phil absolutely mogged the shit out of me so phil not only is tell people what was okay so just for people who understand so yesterday phil challenged me and saying why don't you uh tie different tie knots and i was like well phil i i was, I bet you don't even know what you're

doing. I actually know how to tie four separate ones. This guy sent me this email with some of the most intricate tie knots that I have ever seen, including from his wedding, which were incredible. I gotta pull this up. It was unreal. Like, this dude, look at this. This is

insane. Yeah, I wish I could, I'm not gonna, I don't wanna dox him or like put his face out there but Phil Phil knows what he's doing Phil's got tie game Phil has got serious tie game so Phil absolutely

mogged me L for Stugger thank you Phil yeah massive L for me you were so confident I was confident I mean look

9 out of 10 trolls on the internet or 99.5 out of 10 on the internet it's like some basement dweller, but no, Phil,

he knows what he's doing. All right, so shout out to Phil. Well done, Phil. Okay, last question here for this section. Do you think third party

officials drop out? I want RFK, but maybe in another position. What do you think, Emily? A lot of controversy about the RFK thing. We talked about it yesterday

with Nicole Shanahan. Some RFK people are really upset. Some people are supportive of the move. They're like, hey, screw the Democrats. They tried to get him out of the race. What do you think? Well, we talked about this yesterday and we briefly touched on this, but there is no way that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is getting confirmed by the Senate.

I mean, it's whether it's Trump or Harris, which it wouldn't be Harris. So the likeliest case is that it would be a Trump administration. You cannot get RFK Jr. confirmed by the Senate for any position. And Ryan suggested, well, he could be a czar, not a cabinet level official. I could potentially see that happening. They seem to be making a lot of overtures behind the scenes, even though they're not admitting to it in front of the scenes. But then that's another question as to whether he wants to keep his powder dry to potentially run against Trump again, because we had that conversation yesterday about how being against Trump was absolutely fundamental, central to RFK Jr.'s appeal. He had to be against

Trump and he had to be against Biden. Now he has to be against Trump and he has to be against Harris. So if you then go into a Trump administration, do you ruin your ability to have another successful third party bid? What do you think, Ryan? Yeah, because Vivek took the I'm Vivek. Sorry. Vivek took the I'm running to support Trump as far as you could go. Yeah. Because and even even Trump started making fun of him for it, saying like, you're running against me. How is that supporting me? I don't I don't understand these words that you are saying because it's in conflict with what you are actually doing. But it worked for him. He'll probably get a cabinet administration or something. He'll get something. Yeah, he definitely will. Or he'll get an Ohio run for

Senate in Ohio or something. I have a couple of minds like this. To be honest, I do think it is a bit of a betrayal from RFK because the campaign was explicitly about the double hater voter. The RFK Jr. justification people I've seen is like, well, the Democrats like did everything they could to keep him out of the race. And it's like, yeah, that's definitely true. It's true. I mean, they literally tried to sue and get him off of the ballot. Absolutely. Empirically. But that doesn't mean you also side with the person who you said would be a threat to democracy. You know who you said that I never team up with who and who you said was the swamp.

More importantly, is that he has such an opportunity is like as Nicole clearly lays out when you hit five percent threshold, you get public funds, ballot access. You create a new coalition and effectively create the party in their own image, even taking over with the legacy of Lyndon B. Johnson and effectively running the party from 1960 up until really 1970s. Right. If we think about all the people that were within them, that was the project that I thought he was trying to embark on. Whereas now, if he does drop out and he endorses Trump, it's very difficult to even validate yourself, Ryan, with any of those crossover Democratic voters that they previously could have had because they're going to be like, no, you were just a spoiler against Joe Biden. Whether that's true or not, I don't think that that does the third party movement any like it doesn't make it look good it just makes it look

as bargaining chips and hey look i understand how the world works i'm a cynical guy i totally understand that said i just don't think it's a good look overall and knowing how the trump world and all that works why would you believe anything he promises you yeah you know you're it's not even an you you're never going to get appointed to anything of any consequence. If you work for Trump, by the way, as in the executive branch, you get fired your ass anytime he wants. So it's not all that easy. And you know, he's won, RFK has won what leaked phone call away from just getting fired for no reason. So then you kind of gave up everything for, for you kind of gave up everything without getting anything back. That's

just my opinion. Right. And to have RFK's vice presidential nominee out there saying, we think we're taking votes away from Trump. We think that's a bad thing. Right. And we're worried that we will harm Trump's chances of becoming president just completely changes everything that everybody thought was happening in that race. Right. Right. That's not the ethos of the. That's not why people supported RFK. It's one of these, in my opinion. No, you're That's not the ethos of the campaign. That's not why people supported RFK. At least in my opinion. No, you're right. And it's one of Trump's biggest vulnerabilities

is what RFK Jr. was tapping into. And it was kind of beautiful to behold that first, right? That he was, Donald Trump taps what Rex Tillerson to be your secretary of state. You want to drain the swamp and you bring in the CEO of Exxon Mobil. Like Trump has tons of those problems. Ryan has reported on things that RFK Jr. should be talking about, like FARA controversies

and other genuine financial conflicts. Jared Kushner. These are all ripe for hitting someone who claims to be draining the swamp on. And RFK Jr. has seemed personally to actually want to have a good relationship with donald trump right and not in the sense that like i'm just you know hitting you on policy but we can be friends but in an actual like well maybe there's something we could do together and the bear thing just had to kill him the bear that was just so crazy it was that was just so you're like my god what is going on with this dude the dog thing followed by the bear thing.

Probably because I also think this is another important point about RFK Jr. is he felt like he was putting a respectable vaccine conversation aside. He is a Kennedy. He looks like a Kennedy. He dresses like a Kennedy. He has Kennedy vibes, Kennedy aesthetics. And so there's a normie credibility that he brings to the third party conversation that literally nobody else has in decades. That's how I was decided about his candidacy.

It's going to be the most impactful third party candidate in a generation since. I mean, the last time a real third party candidate was the year I was born, 1992, Ross Perot. So it's been almost 30, 32 years since something like that happened. He had a real chance. And I actually thought he could have put us on the road to breaking, you know, creating something new, let's say 10, 20 years from now. But if that's not what he's interested in,

then frankly, it's gonna set us back quite a bit in terms of anybody who really does want to see that happening. But one of the main recaps is that we had the DNC roll call. Then we had Kamala at the separate rally in Milwaukee. Actually, why don't we talk about that? Because that was actually pretty crazy. Kamala's literally at a separate rally in Milwaukee.

Why don't you tell us about the significance of that, Emily? Because there were some 15,000 people in the stadium there at that time. Absolutely astounding that they have some back-to-back stadium shots of Chicago and Milwaukee. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, critical battleground state. Yeah, and she was in the Fiserv Forum, which is exactly where the Republican National Convention was held just weeks ago, and a very significant decision by the Harris campaign to put her in the Fiserv Forum, which is where, you know, when we were doing counterpoints and

breaking points about a month ago, I was reporting live from there. It's pretty big. Like you said, it holds 15,000 people. Tim Walls alluded to that directly and said, we have lots more energy in here than the other guy did. I bet the other guy is not going to be happy to see this. But when you are able to have energy in a city like Milwaukee, it's going to be similar to having energy in a place like Philadelphia. It's going to be similar to having energy in a place like Detroit. These urban centers in the blue wall states, you really need to have enthusiasm. You can't just have sort of tolerance for the candidate. You need to have enthusiasm for the candidate because these are states where the margins in rural areas and suburbs are going way further right than Democrats are comfortable with post-Obama. And so you have to balance that out with turnout. And so Kamala Harris is making a

big splash by being at the Fiserv Forum with that level of enthusiasm, beaming into the DNC from there. It was a pretty stunning, even just like visually, it was pretty stunning. Go ahead, Ryan. We just linger on a funny point here. on monday night we were told that democrats really desperately wanted to be able to have joe biden in prime time but they just couldn't get the logistics and the coordination down just couldn't make it happen it's a real shame that he couldn't come out until like 11 30 or whatever and then tuesday night from two cities, they can meticulously coordinate the timing of the roll call and the walls and the Harris speeches so that it's all nicely rolled out collectively in prime time. You're a Biden truther.

I think they really learned from Monday, and by Tuesday, they had it together. At the same desk, you told me that you thought that it wasn't intentional. No, I said that. No, I didn't. I said it was intentional. Oh, okay, okay. Good, good. I know it's easy to confuse us. Yeah, I said that. No, I didn't. Oh, I said it was intentional. Oh, okay, okay. Yeah, good, good. I know it's easy to confuse us.

Yeah, yeah, that's true. That's true. I have to juggle that in my head. Guys in the desk, how are we looking over there? We'll take a few more questions. Okay, we're going to take a couple of questions

while we figure out more some of the technical stuff. So as a reminder, everybody in the locals chat, go ahead and get some of those questions in. Those are for our premium subscribers as we are trying to get the audio working so that we can try and show you guys some of the stuff that we saw yesterday. Let's see here for what we have got

so far. All right, locals. I was going to say, by the way, John Legend and Pink are now performing at the dance team. We saw Don Cheadle yesterday. We did. I actually ran into Don Cheadle. Literally, I bumped into him. And he is a lot shorter than I thought he would be. I was like, really, dude? This is Iron Man?

Really? But yeah, that was kind of interesting. Who else did we see? Julia Louis-Dreyfus. That's a teaser. You need to stick around for that. Ryan and Julia Louis-Dreyfus. That's a teaser. You need to stick around for that. Ryan and Julia Louis-Dreyfus got into a fight. That's all I'm going to say.

That's all I'm going to say. We have it on video. We have it on video. We will be showing it to you. I don't know if it was a fight. Huh? It was funny. Let's call it a fight.

It was funny. Ryan, why are you screwing this up? It was funny. It's very funny. It's very funny. Also, I saw Busy Phillips this morning. So the celebs are out. Yeah, the celebs are out, which is very different from the RNC when everyone's sort of like peering to see who gets to go in the golf carts.

And, you know, it's basically like Lee Greenwood. We saw Gavin Newsom yesterday walk right by us. He's tall. He's a lot taller than I thought he would be. I knew he was tall, but I was like, wow, he's a big boy. We saw Hassan like basically hurdle a table. Yeah, that's right. We saw Hassan basically hurdle a table. Yeah, that's right. We saw Hassan knock a table over.

No, he cleared it. He was like, hey, Ryan. So that was funny. All right, let's get some of these questions. We're going to try here. What do we see? It's a lot glitzier than the RNC. I'll just put it that way.

Any reactions from Trump being on Theo Vaughn? Yeah, here's the problem, guys. We've been so busy here that we haven't been able to check in. I'll just put it that way. Any reactions from Trump being on Theo Vaughn? Yeah. Here's the problem, guys. We've been so busy here that we haven't been able to check in. I can't wait to watch it. I am excited. The only clip I've seen is Theo educating Trump about what it's like to be on cocaine. And Trump asked. And he's like, so you like it, huh?

He's like, you like the rush? And he's like, oh, Theo's like, yeah, man. He was like, it turns you into an owl. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was good. What did he say? Theo was like, it's like being on your porch, like shaking like this.

So I do love Theo Vaughn. So shout out to him and his producer, Nick, who is also a fan of the show. Dude, oh, Theo Vaughn is great. And they were doing a really interesting, Theo Vaughn is one of the few people who has, I think has enough respect for Donald Trump as a human being.

I'm not even talking about the politics, but as a human being to ask him about how his brother's death affected him. And it actually, I think, elicited a lot more interesting perspective into who Donald Trump is than just about like dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of corporate media interviews have not gotten that useful of information out of Donald Trump. Here's a good question for you. A question to Sagar and Emily. Can you define what you mean when you mentioned the new right? Emily is far more sophisticated at explaining this than I am. So please go ahead. I feel like you're like a

godfather. That's humiliating. I know. Well, yeah. Yeah. But you know what I'm talking about in that sort of after Donald Trump was elected, there was a group of definitely younger people and some intellectuals in like conservative academic spaces who said, let's rethink things. And there was a lot of resistance to that among like con ink types. And it's gradually- Explain what that means. Explain what that means. It's like the professional industry of the conservative movement. So the collection of nonprofits essentially, like, you know, at the time it was Heritage Foundation and Heritage Foundation has sort of like gotten

on board with the quote unquote new right project. But the national conservatism movement sprang up after that. I remember you gave me a copy of Yoram Hazoni's book in like 2017. That's true. I did. What was it called? The Virtues of Nationalism. Yeah. Yeah. But like that stuff was circulating. It was. It was. And it congealed into stuff like American Compass and Kevin Roberts version of the Heritage Foundation.

And some of it's good, some of it's bad. But it's it's definitely in flux. It's very fluid. It's basically just people who are opposed to the old conservative movement, the old Republican Party. And some of that is really solid. Some of that is really questionable, like really questionable. OK, let's see what else we have in the chat. Oh, this is an interesting one from Tawad. Do you think the convention, including a panel on Palestinian rights, will be ignored or will it hurt or help? So I don't know if that panel has been confirmed. We're going to get oh it did happen okay and was it on the main stage though uh because that's no but that's not how they do that what what they wanted was it so this is how dorky and like ridiculous kind of conventions are

yeah but what they wanted was it to be an official part of the dnc schedule which means it comes with the blessing of the party as a tolerable thing to discuss. And it was Andy Levin and I think four Palestinian Americans on the panel. And so it did happen. It was one of the most, I think it was probably the most widely attended panel of anything because nobody goes to any of the rest of these panels for the most part unless unless it's like your job your paycheck depends on you sitting in there they're going to be there uh this one was i wasn't there but this one was apparently packed and full of energy etc so but i'm sure everybody from the outside is like you're kidding me a panel right like that's that's what that's what you're fighting for here. And we talked to, um, the uncommitted, uh, delegates yesterday. And I said like, okay, your, your other demand here

is that you want a, a Palestinian American speaker from the stage. Uh, and they're pushing for a particular doctor who's been working in Gaza for years to get up on stage and be able to just share what her life has been like inside Gaza. And I said, okay, if you get that plus this panel, does that mean that's it? What are you giving in return? And they said, no, that's not where the quid pro quo is. The transaction has to get all the way to an arms embargo. So they too understand that we're just talking about a panel here. And, but there,

but also Palestinians, Muslim Americans, Arab Americans in general within the democratic party have spent so many years getting beaten down that to be able to win a panel from their perspective is like, wow, like we actually got something. Like it really should show like how marginalized they are within the party that they're this excited

about that small of a victory. Right. All right. Good point. We are still waiting a little bit. We've got to wait for our technical person. So we're going to continue to take questions here. Let's see.

And can Emily explain why gambling is corrosive to the soul? Ooh, that's a spicy one. Also, somebody sent a picture to the premium chat of, remember that guy who ran over to us at the DNC yesterday? He is a premium subscriber and he took a picture with us. Which one? Oh, nice. The books? The guy with the beard.

No, not the book guy. The guy with the beard, he rolled over. Let guy. The guy with the beard. He rolled over. Let's see. Oh, in the arena. This photo. Oh, nice. Yeah, this is the photo. Thanks, brother.

So really, it was great to meet you. His name is Ivan. All right, awesome. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Emily, explain the gambling comment. Well, I think... Corrosive to your bank account, too. Yeah, well, corrosive to your bank account.

I think it's predatory. I mean, I feel like we've... My general perspective on this is... We were actually talking about this over lunch the other day, I think, is like, there's a difference between gambling in a physical casino or at a horse track or whatever, and what happens on your phone, which is primed to be like a penny slot machine that's in your, literally, like that is the design that they use and put in your pocket everywhere you go. And so if you're preying on people's dopamine reactions.

Here, hold on a second, Emily. Just go ahead. Don't worry about it. This is our technical liaison, Stephanie at Barstool. She's entering the chat. They're so good. Stephanie is incredible, by the way. So shout out again to Barstool Sports,

who is allowing us to use their studio, the Dog Walk podcast. We love them. Go ahead and subscribe if you can. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution.

But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and re-examining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator,

and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships it's more than personal it's political it's societal and at times it's far from what i originally intended it to be these days i'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't

being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone,

I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case,

bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never got any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. call. There was a lot of energy in the hall from everywhere. California passed, actually. That didn't actually pass, by the way. It's a tradition because the home state of the candidate is the one who passes up until the actual moment that they take the stage so they can put them over the edge. Mac, give us a little bit of a taste of what that DNC roll call was because there was a hell of a

lot of energy that was in the hall at that time. Let's roll it. So Democrats and independents, it's time for us to do the right thing. And that is to elect Kamala Harris for the next president, Pablo Harris. All right, so that was a little bit of the roll call. We'll go to the next one, I think, because that's actually quite interesting. This was Lil Jon doing the call for Georgia. We just had Parker in the studio, who is a Georgia delegate.

Damn, we should have asked him about this. I talked to him about it before. Did you? Yeah, he said it was like electric. He said they had a party the night before and Raphael Warnock was like on a balcony. What is the Lil Jon Georgia connection? Is he from Georgia?

I think he's from Atlanta. Okay, all right. Matt, can we cue up Lil Jon, please? And let's go ahead and take a listen. This was a big moment in the hall. Georgia, how do you cast your vote? Yeah! Ladies and gentlemen, we are here tonight

to officially nominate Kevin Harris for president. Five, get out, another round of shots. D.H.C., turn out for what? Turn out for what? And you can pull it from there for copyright. Okay, that was absolutely incredible. And that, I mean, does highlight something Emily's been trying to say here.

For people who are doubting, here's the truth. The energy is big. It's here. Emily, you were at the RNC. You were saying it's a little bit more somber there, obviously, because Trump got shot in the head. But this is, look, there's a party atmosphere that we can't deny. And I'm actually glad that we're here on the ground to be able to see it, to feel it. I mean, we're going to talk about how awful the logistics have been. So even though all of these pre

credentialed delegates and all these other people are waiting in hours, long lines of massive pain in the ass, there's all this problems that they don't mind. They're just sitting there standing in line. They're waiting. And when they get in there, they're fired up and ready to go. Well, I'd say I think two things can be true. This is not 2008, but this is also very real. The bench can't be the most exciting Democratic campaign in modern history. It is not. And Ryan, I'm curious what you think about this because you've actually been to these conventions. I don't think the energy in the room is 2008-esque.

I also, though, don't think it's fake, which the right is saying. And Ryan was at 08, so it was perfect. And Axios had a poll of Hispanic voters that showed the enthusiasm gap that existed before Harris took over the top of the ticket had been closed with just Hispanic voters, like entirely closed between Trump and Harris in terms of Hispanic voter enthusiasm among Democrats versus Hispanic Republican voters. So obviously, even the polling is picking up on just subjectively, qualitatively what we've noticed. So two things can be true. What do you think about that? It's not 08, but it is lit. 2008 was indeed electric. It had, you know, so it had non cringe celebrities who were like everybody was fired up. Everybody's believing like we might actually like prove that we're not the racist country that we thought we were by electing Barack Obama as president. He gave his acceptance speech in the like Denver football stadium, like just 60, 70,000 people or more just blowing.

There was no roof, just, you know, just crushing it. But what people forget is that 2008 also had a very divisive primary against hillary clinton and all over denver and throughout the convention uh were these groups of mostly women um who were called pumas oh i remember which yeah party unity my ass party unity my ass yeah they were marching through denver constantly and they they were pissed off Right. And so there is actual party unity now. Yeah. Like you saw AOC and Bernie and like- That's true, that was big.

Like everybody is together basically with the party establishment. Let's show a little bit of that. Hey, can we go ahead and put the next one up there, Mac? This is Kamala. We talked about this a little bit earlier, but to me it was very extraordinary. And I want to make sure whenever we do YouTube clips that people can see this. We can see some of this,

Mac, which is that at the same time that the United Center was filled in Chicago, Kamala Harris is in Milwaukee, 15,000 people in the same stadium where they had the RNC and then accepts the Democratic Party nomination there from the stage. We have that queued up. OK, let's go ahead and play a little bit of it for the people. I'm a riot, I'm a riot through your borders. Call me bulletproof. Love, forgive me, I've been running, running blind and true. I'm a way out of the tower. Yeah, why don't we just get out of here? National Convention, well they just completed their roll call. And they have nominated Coach Walls and me to be the next Vice President and President of the United States of America.

So there you go. You could see her accept that nomination. Let's go to the next one, and we're going to give people some of the highlights of the other speeches. Immediately after that, we kind of moved into primetime. Do you have a quick comment? I was just going to say, that is an absolute flex. Yeah, that was a big flex.

We're at the convention, swing state, blue wall state, she beams in this massive crowd, excited crowd. Absolutely. Here's a comparison clip between the RNC and the DNC. Do we? Oh yeah, that's right. Why don't we go ahead and put that up there on the screen, just to put some of the RNC energy versus the DNC energy. You can see, I mean,

frankly, this is probably more reflective of who gets to be the average delegate to the RNC. You've just basically got a bunch of boomers and old people um at the rnc versus well let's look we had parker here not a lot of parkers yeah they're not a lot of parkers at the at the rnc if we're being honest they're definitely there as youtubers and streamers yeah like laura was there yeah all those folks but they're not actually the delegates so yes uh go ahead and roll that for us mac this is courtesy of morning joe i guess i have to say that. Let's commence with the roll, with a call of the roll of the states. Delegates, are you ready? Let me hear you.

Iowa, 40 delegates. Dude, you've got to do it. I love Britney. Georgia. 59 delegates alright pull out of it back pull out of it so that is some partisan hackery to be fair because there was a ton

of enthusiasm from a lot of delegates at the RNC and you could probably go back and find clips of people wilding out at the RNC but the best description I would say is that the RNC is more like a political event feels more like a political is that the RNC is more like a political event, feels more like a political event, whereas the DNC feels more like a Hollywood event. It feels like it's a more entertainment event. And like the RNC had a feeling of heaviness because Trump had just been shot in the head. But also it had this kind of confidence because at that point it was Biden versus the guy who had just survived an assassination attempt.

So people just felt really that there was a weight, a gravity to it, and they felt really confident. And I think you see a lot of confidence with the Dems, which is why Kamala flexed and beamed in from Milwaukee. But it's also just like this total sugar rush. You know, whether it lasts is the big question. What was shocking to me about the roll call is that Democrats did something new. Yeah. Like that. That's an innovation on the form of the convention. Yeah. Well, they produced it. Wow. I didn't know you could do something. They produced it for television. They wanted I mean, they got what they wanted, which is we're covering it. It's a media moment.

It was actually produced in order to project energy and dare say, joy. That's a word that we heard a lot last night, and that was a key to basically all of the major speeches. Let's go now to Bernie Sanders. We have two separate clips that we can show. He was given a primetime speaking slot. He used it to really push some of his 2016 energy, but I will say, just going into it, it was remarkable to me. I mean, 2016,

Bernie Sanders, this is a man who basically had the DNC steal the race away from him and rigged the primary process, who he's been at war with his entire life, then ascending to the main stage in primetime to endorse Kamala Harris. But he did it, I guess, in his own way. He gave a nod to some of the ceasefire talk. Max got it loaded. Let's take a listen. We must end this horrific war in Gaza. Bring home the hostages and demand an immediate ceasefire. All right. So there you go. Demanding an immediate ceasefire. He also had a permanent whatever. Nobody wants to hear my nitpicking. It's not permanent. It's just immediate. Like

he won't like what we will do is we'll let you get some of your energy out of the protest block because I know how frustrated you are with the uncommitted movement now so far. Let's get the next one up there. What I want to do is show everybody the contrast and truly the big tent that we've seen here at the DNC. Preceding Bernie Sanders is Kenneth Chenault. He's a hundred millionaire, former Amex chairman who's like, Akamala is so great for business. And it's like in America is the best place to start a credit card company with legal usury. Then Bernie Sanders takes the stage to

attack billionaires, which is immediately then followed by JB Pritzker, who starts bragging about being an actual billionaire in contrast to Trump. All right, so Mac, let's take the billionaire clip here from Bernie, and then quickly we'll hot switch it to J.B. Pritzker right afterwards. And my friends, at the very top of that to-do list is the need to get big money out of our political process. Billionaires in both parties should not be able to buy elections, including primary elections. Got it. Let's pull out. All right, so billionaires should not be able to buy elections,

including primary erections. Oh, what did I say there? Whoops. Oh, what was that? Too bad we're live. Perils of live. It's the live nude sign that's over there. Yeah, that is.

My mind is going in different directions. Okay, so then immediately after that, what happens is that we have J.B. Pritzker, the governor of the state that we're in right now, Illinois, who is also an air, a billionaire air. All right. So an heir to a billionaire fortune hasn't even made his own billionaire fortune. And then bragging about being a billionaire in contrast to Donald Trump. So, Mac, let's roll it for the people. Donald Trump thinks that we should trust him on the economy because he claims to be very rich. But take it from an actual billionaire. Trump is rich in only one thing, stupidity.

There it is. So take it from an actual billionaire. And I got to give credit to producer Mac and to producer Griffin because we were all watching the speech together. And he's like, I literally cannot believe that that just happened right after Bernie Sanders spoke on the stage. Attacking a billionaire, then having a billionaire governor who, okay, nobody becomes a billionaire governor just out of the goodness of their own heart and talent. Especially, I frankly, I don't get Pritzker energy.

I don't think he's good. I don't think he's really all that talented. He's hokey as hell to me, Ryan. I generally like JB. He's been an extremely progressive governor in Illinois. That was the worst, most ridiculous thing I've ever seen. There is a sect of democratic activists who have been making this argument against Trump that he's not a real billionaire, that these are the real

billionaires for years now. And I think that energy was channeled through Pritzker there, and they loved seeing it. I think it's utterly tone deaf, absurd. And to your you make a great point. Just like Trump, he inherited his money. You didn't even do it. It's like a hotel fortune. Right. What are you doing?

He's using the DNC stage to squash billionaire beefs and to engage in billionaire beefing, which is truly like... That's as bad as politics get, folks. Nobody wants it. Nobody wants it, except for the wine moms. But that's the problem. Let's be honest. There is a constituency for this. There is a 350,000 a year income

voter in Peachtree, Georgia. Yep, it's the DeKalb County. Parker was just talking about it. He's right. He's not even a real billionaire, just like our man JB. Take it from a real billionaire. Yeah, take it from a real billionaire. But that led to, frankly, some nice moments.

I was saying here, look, people know I'm a cynical guy. You and Crystal. But I'm a sucker for the reluctant spouse, the spouse who does not even want to be on the stage, but who, you know, they're like, OK, I'm going to do it for for her, for him. Like Anne Romney. Remember that it was very similar, like people who they don't really want to be in the spotlight, but they're they just want their horse.

That's right. Yeah, there's but their spouses have chosen to be in this lane. And Doug Emhoff, he certainly stole a lot of hearts in the audience. People were people were crying and he wanted to humanize Kamala Harris yesterday. to be in this lane and Doug Emhoff, uh, he, he certainly stole a lot of hearts in the audience. People were, people were crying and he, uh, wanted to humanize Kamala Harris yesterday. So he, he told the story of their first date. Uh, why don't we go ahead Mac, if we can, and cue this up, uh, the story of the voicemail and of his, uh, and which he says is played every anniversary, coincidentally, which is on Thursday. Let's go ahead and take a listen. For generations, people have debated when to call the person you're being set up with. And never in history has anyone suggested 8.30 a.m.

And yet, that's when I dialed. I got Kamala's voicemail and I just started rambling. Hey, it's Doug. I'm on my way to an early meeting. Again, it's Doug. I remember I was trying to grab the words out of the air and just put them back in my mouth and for what seemed like far too many minutes i hung up by the way kamala saved that voicemail and she makes me listen to it on every anniversary all right so

you know he's he's not exactly the best speaker in the world, but Griffin compared it to dads at wedding. You're rooting for him. You just have to root for him, and it is sweet. He also, again, in terms of trying to humanize her, which, frankly, has been one of the bigger political vulnerabilities that she's had, tries to speak about her role in his own family life. So let's go ahead and cue up the next part there, Mac,

and we will take a listen. Kamala is a joyful warrior. It's doing for her country what she has always done for the people that she loves. Her passion will benefit all of us when she's our president. And here's the thing about joyful warriors. They're still warriors. And Kamala is as tough as it comes.

Just ask the criminals, the global gangsters, and the witnesses before the Senate Judiciary Committee. She never runs from a fight. And she knows the best way to deal with a coward is to take him head on. Because we all know cowards are weak, and Kamala Harris can smell weakness. She doesn't tolerate any BS. You've all seen that look, and you know that look I'm talking about. That look is not just a meme it reflects our true belief in honest and directly so there you go look i'm again uh this is the job of the spouse at the convention just ask those kids yeah well and again like nobody cares about me what i have

to say about this at this point because it's all joy and it's etc but you can also ask the people wrongfully convicted that have been that can basically demonstrate that they were innocent and yet are still behind bars. Are you talking about justice impacted people there? No, I'm talking, well, yes. Justice impacted innocent people who Kamala Harris kept in prison with paperwork arguments. But that's very inconvenient to all of us.

Weed, truancy. Yes. I mean, it's also inconvenient from the Trump side. They don't know quite how to handle it because she's soft on crime or she's too tough on crime. Right. But there are plenty of innocent people that are obviously innocent that Harris worked to keep behind bars, not saying that she thinks they're guilty, but you didn't file your lousy attorney filing soon enough, or you missed this deadline, so therefore you should rot in prison. So yeah, she joyfully fights

those people too. Sager is right, though. Emhoff understood the assignment. Yeah, that was his assignment. That's the job. It might work on Sager and Crystal, which it seemed to. It doesn't really do it for me, but he did a good job of doing what he had to do. That's because you and I are online. Okay, I can separate both my analyst hat and then being the guy who also knows that this

guy knocked up his nanny, which is gross, right? Yeah, yeah. Immediately following a very messy divorce. Corporate lawyer and all that. But look, people don't want to hear that. And also look, spouse, it's fair game-ish like etc. It does tell us a little bit about kind of like who these people are underneath, but I've

also been around enough politicians. like these are messy ass people. Listen, screwed up. They're egomaniacs. They're not going to have normal. They're not going to have normal lives. No. Kamala Harris, by the way, has one of the highest rates of like or one of the lowest rates of staff retention. When she was in the Senate, she said the same thing happened when she was vice president.

So when Doug Emhoff is talking about how tough Kamala Harris is, that she's not just joyful. She's also very much the warrior. There is another side to Kamala Harris that has, as she's been establishing herself the last few weeks, it has been incredibly successful from a PR standpoint. Heavy assist from the media, but it's working so far. In fact, usually whenever they're like a sweetheart publicly, that means they are mean as hell behind the scenes. I've read some of the- Klobuchar. I have read, yeah, not just Klobuchar. I've read some incredible stories

about like Bill Clinton and his legendary anger. Oh yes, I've heard those. And like all these guys. Or the stories about Harris's offices. Oh, Harris, all these other people. The way it's been explained to me is that they have to project niceness to the entire outside world.

And the only outlet that they have is on their staff. And so the staff is just, they sit there and they have to take a beating. Camp Shane, one of America's longest running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets.

Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and re-examining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today.

Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind VoiceOver, the movement that exploded in 2024. VoiceOver is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover, to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship

is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds

of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her, and it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even

try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line

at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's go ahead and move to the Obama section. So obviously this was critical. This was the big flagship moment. We had two major speeches from Michelle Obama and Barack Obama. And I think that there were two primary instructions to the Obamas. For Michelle, first and most noteworthy to me, she didn't mention Joe Biden's name one time. It was all

about Kamala Harris. But more importantly, there were a lot of subtle digs at Biden. She talked about this sickness inside of her that existed while Joe Biden was a candidate, and then how joyful she felt. There was also the hope is making a comeback. So there was a lot of riding the nostalgia wave and trying to get the Democratic base in prime for two things. Number one, literally fired up and ready to go, which Obama gave us that signature line. But two is don't lose hope. Every single day matters. You need to get out there. You need to door knock. This is going to be a tight race. Don't get complacent. So it was the, that was like the primary message. Michelle also, one of the instructions clearly that was given to her was we need to nip a lot

of this democratic infighting in the bud and everybody needs to get with the program and get with the program right now. So let's go ahead, Mac, and let's cue up Michelle Obama. Hope is making a comeback. That's probably the biggest, one, and let's cue up Michelle Obama. Hope is making a comeback. That's probably the biggest one of the bigger lines that she had that night. We'll play some of the others. But let's hear this first one. Something wonderfully magical is in the air, isn't it? You know, we're feeling it here in this arena, but it's spreading all across this country. We love a familiar feeling that's been buried too deep for far too long. You know what I'm talking about. It's the contagioususp of a brighter

day, the chance to vanquish the demons of fear, division, and hate that have consumed us and continue pursuing the unfinished promise of this great nation, the dream that our parents and grandparents fought and died and sacrificed for. America, hope is making a comeback. All right, let's pull out of that, Max. So obviously, that was a big, brutal, quick comment. One point on that. A lot of people in the Democratic coalition felt hope in 2015 and in 2019 when Bernie Sanders was running for president on a pledge to remake the country

in a more hopeful and just direction, running for something. If you notice there, what was the hope there? No Trump. That she would vanquish the evil spirits. The demons. And that's how you unite the Democratic Party. Not in something forward looking of what we're going to do, but in who we're going to beat. That's right. Keep out of office. This was the key thing. Actually, to me, the most important lines from the Obamas,

both of their speeches was tone policing the Democratic coalition. So, Mac, let's queue up the next one. This is Michelle Obama on the dissenters. And here we have her basically saying mostly to the Gaza protesters like, hey, guys, let's nip this in the bud. We're all coming together. It's unity time. If you don't get with the program, then you're basically helping Donald Trump. Go ahead, Mac. Let's take a listen. Let's get specifically to this quote about the worst enemies and all of that. So go ahead. As we embrace this renewed sense of hope, let us not forget the despair we have felt. Let us not forget what we are up against. Yes, Kamala and Tim are doing great now. We're loving it. They're packing arenas across the country. Folks are energized. We are feeling good. But remember, there are still so many people who are desperate for a different outcome, who are ready to question and criticize every move Kamala makes, who are eager to spread

those lies, who don't want to vote for a woman, who will continue to prioritize building their wealth over ensuring that everyone has enough. So no matter how good we feel tonight or tomorrow or the next day, this is going to be an uphill battle. So folks, we cannot be our own worst enemies. No. See, because the minute something goes wrong, the minute a lie takes hold, folks, we cannot start wringing our hands. We cannot get a Goldilocksieties about whether this country will elect someone like Kamala instead of doing everything we can to get someone like Kamala elected. So that was the key moment, Ryan, the Goldilocks complex. We can't be bogged down in some of this protest nonsense. Not everything can be just right. We cannot indulge our anxieties. I thought that was really, really interesting for Michelle because we combine effectively the family, her and Nancy Pelosi, the most responsible for getting Biden out of the race. Clearly, she has massive resentment against Joe Biden. She didn't even mention his name one time, didn't thank him, nothing. Implied that he made her

physically ill to her stomach while he was in office. And then at the same time, doing the tone policing that Obama picks up on in his speech. Go ahead, Ryan. What'd you make of that? Yeah, I also thought it was aimed a little bit at people who spent the first, you know, several weeks saying like, hey, by the way, what are you going to run on? What are your policies? My name's not Trump. What are you going to do if you win? And then when the policies do come out, there's some nitpicking at them here and there. She's saying, like, don't just don't do that.

Like, don't worry about it. We're running against Trump. He's bad. It's not going to be a perfect campaign. And, you know, that I understand that argument. Sureffiyeh or anything, there's a lot of side eye. And I noticed also when we were interviewing some of the uncommitted delegates and others, that there was a, people were beefing, is the way I would put it, to them. Their presence is not welcome, is the way I would put it. What's interesting is that the policy they support is very welcome. Like, whenever anybody, Warnock, right.

But when Warnock or Sanders or AOC mentions Gaza, like the crowd is like with them. And if you poll Democrats, they want a permanent ceasefire. Like they are – they want this attack on Gaza to end now. But you're right that the individuals who are pushing and making things uncomfortable for them internally, they'd be like, can you tone it down a little bit? Yeah, you're exactly right. Okay, let's go. I think we have a final Michelle Obama clip. This is probably her biggest moment of the night, making fun of Trump for saying black jobs during his National Association of Black Journalists appearance recently. Mac, why don't we go ahead

and queue up the next one? Here's Michelle with the biggest line of the night. We know what comes next. We know folks are going to do everything they can to distort her truth. My husband and I sadly know a little something about this. For years, Donald Trump did everything in his power to try to make people fear us. See, his limited, narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hard-working, highly educated, successful people who happen to be black. Wait. I want to know. I want to know who's going to tell him who's going to tell him that the job he's currently seeking might just be one of those black jobs. Boom. Biggest line of the night. So I think that was pretty significant. This was Michelle from all accounts inside the hall was much actually better received than Obama. Part of the reason that we led with her. She there's still so much energy around her, obviously, as a potential candidate. She clearly has no zero interest. But any last thoughts on Michelle Obama? The number of people throughout American history who could waltz into the White House if they

want it, but decide not to do it. You can probably count on one hand. Like she could have finished her speech last night by saying, actually, you know what? Yeah, it's me. I think I want the nomination. The place would have just absolutely erupted. They would have marched to Milwaukee and told Kamala Harris, like, I'm sorry. Thank you very much. Thank you, Kamala. Thank you, Kamala. Thank you, Kamala. But it's going to be Michelle. I'm sorry. Yeah, she could have seized

it, like, in the moment. They would have figured out a procedural way to make it right to make it happen yes yet she doesn't want it it's it's it's truly like not in this political world that that like uh resistance to that poll let's go ahead and move on to president obama he took the stage it was a pretty long speech actually um well and he tried again to resurrect some of the hits so here we have yes She Can that he tried to get going as a chant inside of the hall. Let's take a listen. College shouldn't be the only ticket to the middle class. We need to follow the lead of governors like Tim Walz, who said, if you've got the skills and the drive, you shouldn't need a degree to work for state government. And in this new economy, we need a president who actually cares about the millions of people all across this country who wake up every single day to do the essential, often thankless work, to care for our sick, to clean our streets, to deliver our packages.

We need a president who will stand up for their right to bargain for better wages and working conditions. And Kamala will be that president. Yes, she can. Yes, she can. Yes, she can. Yes, she can. All right, fired up and ready to go.

He gave us all of the absolute classics. Yes, she can. Yes, she can. All right, fired up and ready to go. He gave us all of the absolute classics. Yes, she can. There was also a big moment here on crowd sizes. I'll let everybody decide what Obama was talking about in terms of size for yourself. Probably not family friendly for the stream, but let's go ahead and cue this up. Mac, let's get the shot of President Obama talking about Trump's obsession with crowd sizes. There's the childish nicknames, the crazy conspiracy theories, this weird obsession with crowd sizes.

That was absolutely his biggest line of the night. That was his biggest line. He's so good at this too, by the way. He does the roasts. He's good at the roasts. He's great with crowd work. I mean, he's good with the crowd.

Look, he's one of the most generational, probably the best generational politician in modern American history. He was right, though, that anybody following Michelle is stupid.

He was flat. Yeah, I didn't think he was good. He actually, oh, i don't think we have that line about the leaf blower um yeah i don't i don't think maybe we can find it on twitter we could probably find it but yes you go ahead and search for that leaf blower thing while i'm talking but uh yeah this is a this is an old rich man yeah being out of touch yeah you're right he looked and he's like you know when you're it's literally like for people who've ever watched 30 rock tracy morgan talks about getting he's like i've lost touch with my roots and he'll do a set we'll be like you know when you're in saint bart's and people are eating their lobster it's like literally obama like in uh obama's in his multi-million dollar mansion in martha's vineyard and he's like

you know when your chef dies uh whenever he goes swimming on your property when you're gone and you just can't get anybody to serve you some fresh sushi the next day. And you lose your paddleboard. It's just one of those where it's really difficult

out here, folks. So we do have the leaf blower line. He looked... Cue it up and let Ryan talk right now. Yeah, he... Tell me if you agree, Chad,

but I think he looks angry at himself after his mind bombs. Yeah, it was bad. After his bombs. He's like, God, I shouldn think he looks angry at himself after it bombs. He's like, God, I shouldn't have said this. Let's hear it, dude. The other day I heard someone compare Trump to the neighbor who keeps running his leaf blower outside your window every minute of every day. Now, from a neighbor, that's exhausting from a president

it's just dangerous all right let's pull out of that i thought it was awful it was very yeah and you know in the second after that at all he's like he's like oh that didn't right yeah you can tell he knows yeah anyway he's so mad at whatever billionaire right made that point to him right yes yeah he's never he's never texting that He knows. Anyway, he's so mad at whatever billionaire made that point to him right now. Yeah, you're never he's never texting that guy back. He's like he's like, hey, Richard Branson, when we're on the private island, just shut up next time. OK, just for that was his first trip after president, if anybody is wondering. OK, let's go ahead. Finally, the last clip of Obama. This, again, pairs very well with Michelle, the most important part. Here is Obama trying to tone police Democrats. Stop being so preachy. We need to win people over. No more language nonsense. Lots of anti-cancel culture stuff here. So let's hear it from Obama. This was a – honestly, this was one of the biggest sections of his speech, and he saved it to the end. And he was speaking very directly at the audience here. So let's take a listen to Professor Obama.

Isn't just a bunch of abstract principles and dusty laws in some book somewhere? It's the values we live by. It's the way we treat each other, including those who don't look like us, or pray like us, or see the world exactly like we do. That sense of mutual respect has to be part of our message. Our politics have become so polarized these days that all of us across the political spectrum seem so quick to assume the worst in others, unless they agree with us on every single issue. We start thinking that the only way to win is to scold and shame and out-yell the other side. And after a while, regular folks just tune out. Or they don't bother to vote.

Now that approach may work for the politicians who just want attention and thrive on division. But it won't work for us to make progress on the things we care about, the things that really affect people's lives. We need to remember that we've all got our blind spots and contradictions and prejudices, and that if we want to win over those who aren't yet ready to support our candidates, we need to listen to their concerns

and maybe learn something in the process. After all, if a parent or grandparent occasionally says something that makes us cringe, we don't automatically assume they're bad people. We recognize that the world is moving fast, that they need time and maybe a little encouragement to catch up. All right. I mean, tone policing Obama.

I mean, I don't disagree with a word that he said. I mean, this is something that people always forget about Obama. This is the guy who lied about not supporting gay marriage in 2008, right? This is the guy who's like, what are you talking about? I love to shoot guns. I'm not a rich liberal from Chicago. You know, and the point behind that is actually sometimes trying to play up and be, you know, trying to relate to people who you're not like is not a bad thing.

And he's about persuading people to vote for you. And no matter what, he was never good at getting other people elected, lost state houses and all that. He was great at getting himself elected. I mean, 2012 was a winnable race for Republicans. And I think in retrospect, he actually Obama very easily could have been beaten. But he played a masterful campaign, brutal against Romney, despite the bad economy. And up until the day he left office, maintain some 55, something 60 percent approval rating. That's high. And people should listen and learn from that.

Part of the reason that Obama got the primetime speech last night, how I Bill Clinton is getting a primetime speech right before Tim Walz. Not an accident in either of those cases. No, absolutely not. And the yes, she can chance, I don't even want to gloss over that. I feel like that's actually a really, really big deal because you're transferring, right? It's sort of like how Hillary Clinton transferred herself as this building block. She transferred 2016 and 2008 to some extent to this building block to the first female presidency. And what you have with Obama is this transferring of inspirational energy that a lot of Democratic voters still remember than to Kamala Harris. And I think Obama's at his worst when he's lecturing. This is least likable when he's it's like he's talking down to the public.

That's not his strength. I think that's when he like veers into the unlikable Obama. But when he's likable, he reminds people why they showed up in the streets of Chicago for him. I mean, does anyone remember how big that crowd was election night? It was unreal. That's a legendary moment in American politics. And so if you can channel that to the Harris campaign,

just give her a little bit of that magic, as Michelle Obama mentioned. If you can rub off on her some of that. It did not work for Hillary Clinton. We talked about this recently. My final thought on just on the DNC, everything that happened. Yes, there were contradictions. J.B. Pritzker, Bernie Sanders. But in primetime, the Obamas, they really brought it home.

Obama, by the way, did take time to actually thank Joe Biden. So, you know, at least somebody in the family was like, hey, thank you very much, Joe Biden, for everything that you're doing. Well, in terms of how it went for them, I thought that it was effective in trying to transfer as much of their energy as they can. Let's let's not forget they weren't able to put Hillary across the line. You know, it's not like they still are able to do that, but they did their best that they could to kind of fire up the energy. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight-loss camps for kids,

promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment

and reexamining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. VoiceOver, the movement that exploded in 2024. VoiceOver is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover, to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us

think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves.

Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend.

I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case,

bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never got any kind of answers for.

If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm going to take a quick bathroom break, everybody. Emily and Ryan are going to be taking questions from our premium subscribers. As a reminder, we have that promo. Are these premium? No. So go to the live chat you see right here.

This is where questions will be coming in. Click jump to recent messages. Okay. And then just sit there and wait for some of the questions to roll in. So as people are reminded of, we have a promo going on right now in terms of a free month trial

for Breaking Points. BreakingPoints.com. DNC free is the promo code. There you go. So Emily and Ryan, you guys can hold down the fort. You can offer last thoughts if you want.

I'm just going to go into the bathroom. Too many ghost energy drinks. There's a really good question here, actually, for Ryan, I think, which is predictions for a Kamala cabinet. That's a fascinating question. Think of the Secretary of State. Who do we go with here? Well, the scariest one is Treasury secretary. There is, there are some indications that Gina Raimondo, who desperately tried to become treasury secretary under the Biden administration and ended up being commerce

secretary. She was kind of blocked by the kind of Warren faction, Bernie faction in Washington, D.C. She's a like former banker who became Rhode Island's governor as as friendly to corporate America and banks as you can get in today's Democratic Party, which is awfully friendly. a, I think that was basically a fake report in the sense that they wanted it hanging out there, that she was being vetted for vice president, despite the fact that they were never going to choose her. So that when she was then named as treasury secretary, it'd be a more palatable and predictable choice. Oh yeah, she was almost vice president. And like, we're going to have a, we're going to have a woman treasury secretary in Yellen followed by Romano. So I think that would be a pretty dark signal of which if Kamala does go that direction and you're looking at a very like kind of corporate friendly administration at that point. However, she would then be clashing with, you know, Lina Khan, Rohit Chopra over at CFPB. Which is sort of Trumpian, right?

Where you had these people from totally different polls fighting it out, duking it out in his cabinet meetings. He liked it. So yeah, Secretary of State. Jake Sullivan? No, she's getting rid of these guys. To her credit,

she has said Lloyd Austin, gone. Jake Sullivan, gone. Tony Blinken, gone. Good. So who does she surround herself with? Because for the last... So she's got two interesting so she's got Elon Goldberg and Phil Gordon as her like top so Elon Goldberg uh is his is her uh liaison basically to the Jewish uh community is kind of a well-respected he's as he's like a liberal zionist basically um uh but like there's some

hostility to him from the apac world um he's he's not it's not but you're never you're never going to get like an anti-zionist um certainly not in the uh that liaison position but not as secretary of state either uh phil gordon wrote wrote a a book about American coups and interventions. And the thesis of the book is that they have almost always been disastrous for the country where we carried them out, but also counter to U.S. interests. So it would be fascinating if that trajectory continues. Well, just, yeah, that is super interesting. And just think about this. Since what night since January of 2000, Democrats have not had a personnel situation of non Obama people in the White House. So this is like the torch being passed to Kamala Harris and her saying no to Biden world.

That's really saying no to obama world which takes us back to for democrats and you've been covering this since like 2008 january 2009 this is a new set of people for the most part if she's jettisoning the obama folks yeah it's elon goldenberg by the way not elon goldberg um you were close but uh so and but yeah uh if you, there's not a lot of wiggle room in the American empire. But if they if you could move from the Biden kind of foreign policy folks to the Obama approach to the Middle East, which was like try to actually like check Saudi Arabia, disengage and move on from that region, then that within the confines of the possible is kind of, it would be a better, a better. Good question from Harlow Byrne. All right.

Thank you. All right. Appreciate it. Maybe Weigel has thoughts on that. Thank you for indulging my, indulging my bathroom break. In the interim, we also brought in the intrepid reporter, Dave Weigel of Semaphore. Dave is here on the scene for covering the DNC. And, but yet, Dave, we're going to have to talk about RFK Jr.

That's why I have this phone for. Lots of things, but I just texted him to try to confirm the RFK thing. Okay, so Dave, we reacted to a clip of Nicole Shanahan yesterday. Huge, obviously. But now RFK is slated to do a press conference

on Friday in the state of Arizona. Donald Trump is going to be in Arizona. We have a quote here from Jonathan Carl. I will not confirm or deny that about endorsing Donald Trump. We're not talking about it. This is RFK Jr. saying that. What's your reaction? Tell us what you're seeing, hearing,

etc. They want to surprise people on Friday. We're going to see how many people speak about this. Both what they announce and whether he shows up at this, I think, turning point action event. Yeah. And nobody around this event is confirming, oh, we're going to have an amazing moment. You're going to love it. They want some suspense. But that's clearly where it's heading. And Trump has already done what Democrats I was talking to like, which is saying that he likes RFK, would put him in administration. They believe their whole heuristic this year is these guys are weird.

And they believe through lots of money and opposition research and media outreach, they have defined RFK from what he was before to a laughingstock. They had other words in my phone forum, but they really think that when people hear RFK, maybe whatever they thought of him two years ago, they now think brainworm, leaving a bear central park, conspiracy theorist will say anything and they think that they could build they could duct tape that to trump now that that is their take which i think might be a little bit optimistic because there are a chunk of voters who hate the

establishment they'd say oh well if trump brings him this guy i'm interested but they don't think that'll matter that's that's their take all, so what do you think? The Democratic reaction, obviously, they're not happy about it. But with Trump himself, one of the things I'm interested in, because you talked to these guys too, they didn't want to do the quid pro quo deal with him for cabinet membership. So what realistically can RFK get out of Donald Trump at this point? The thing is, he already said he'd be interested in putting him in administration. So what are the follow-up questions?

And Trump, unlike other presidential candidates, does lots of questions. I wouldn't say he's been baited into it. He likes it anyway, but they're doing more because Kamala's not doing it. What are the follow-up questions? Where would you put him in administration? Do you agree with him on vaccines? You could just kind of write, you keep going, write a list of things he would get asked. I haven't talked to a Democratic senator since this. I've talked to some this morning. We're at the convention. It's not hard.

They're everywhere. Yeah, they are. But the question for them is, would you vote to confirm this guy anything? They'll probably say, they'll probably say no because they think he's, they think he's a lunatic at this point. But it becomes a series of questions and we're, it's 77 days. That's a lot of days. But every day you're spending on odd questions about a potential

personnel pick is not a win. You're not nailing Tim Walz. You're not nailing Kamala Harris. You're saying, would we put this guy

who, look at this clip of him saying something weird on a podcast seven months ago. I might be mainlining too much of what Democrats are saying just because they were

answering my text faster in the last 30 minutes. And we're surrounded by them. But that's their they think because what would this look like? Would it step on their convention? It would be news that would come out of the convention, but they don't think it would be bad for them. I could see Trump having a lot of fun, actually, potentially with Kennedy, because I think Trump understands the Kennedy aesthetics maybe better than RFK Jr. does at this point. Like I could see Trump trotting him out at rallies and being like, this is a member of a democratic royalty. This is a Kennedy.

The Kennedys are an iconic American family and he can't stomach the Democrats. Right, no, that's an argument Trump could make about it. And I have met, I know enough people who just don't like your audience, right? People like Bill, I know who watch this show, listen to Joe Rogan. And they would take a second look at Trump

if someone like Kennedy, who they think is honest. I mean, I read YouTube comments. I'm not sure why, but you do see just people who are not maybe in the mainstream media discourse hear him and think, this guy can't be saying all this. He must be honest. There is no politician that talks like this. He would have announced right with, I think you're right.

He would have that with a lot of people. I mean, empirically too, Dave, he is drawing votes away from Trump. At this point, yes. At this point, it's just crystal clear. We see it where he was at 12% or whatever, drops down to 5%. Almost all the Democrat disaffected is going back to Kamala. So for Trump, it's a problem.

It would be smart for him to make a deal with it. Yeah, Democrats have been dug in against him. They thought, I think, for the last couple weeks that he was hurting Trump, but they still thought it was an X factor. And right now they're in a good mood right now obviously. Right now they're thinking we can put together a 2008 coalition. Who cares? We don't need to slice off votes for him. But they – not enough up, but also the only money being spent for Kennedy by a party was Republicans, Republican donors funding a PAC, not restoration PAC, a different PAC in Pennsylvania.

Some of that. But there's one in Pennsylvania that was saying direct mail to Democrats and saying, hey, Democrats, RFK was on the ballot. He's a great Democrat. He's progressive. He's pro-choice. They're still and maybe they were just behind behind the times. But Democrats have been convinced for a long time there is there that these guys are just not gettable and their coalition. I mentioned those voters. They're not getting Joe Rogan voters. They're not getting like the working class people, guys undecided about this. They are getting college educated liberals who like the Kennedys, but think this guy is bad. And so they just don't talk to these people anymore.

Curious for you. I just think they're totally missing it like i think democrats yeah i think democrats are wrong that um this could this could significantly help trump at the margins if this is if this is another election that's decided in a handful of swing states by 150 000 votes or 200 000 votes total and it moves five five percent is a lot i agree yeah no that's five percent and falling so by the time, if he, if, if he stays into November, he might be at two or 3% by the time that all comes around, but two or 3% is enough in 150,000.

Yeah. And I was, I was talking to other Democrats, not today, but before who were just, who were joking, but joking with intent that it'd be great if one of our rich people started sending mail to,

uh, you know, guys who we get with likefl channel subscriptions saying you're gonna love rfk jr yeah in the context that they thought they had they had to pump him up um the one the x factor is how popular is is kamal harris by the time we vote because that's i think what i'm talking about they're getting this the other thing right now was her favorables this is unprecedented or up at some at somebody this point in her life in american politics is now eight six eight six to eight to nine points more popular more favorably viewed than trump walls is favorably viewed and in a it's not a double hater election anymore right now it's not

it is the election between a democrat who's about as popular as biden was 2020 a little bit less and trump who's more popular than ever but 40 40, 42%. And they think in that, well, 50%, that's it. We just go and convince everyone who voted for Mark Kelly in Arizona, everyone who voted for John Ossoff in Georgia, those people just come back. You know us. You know Kamala Harris. You like her, don't you?

So talk to us. So you've been around now, the Democrats, the narrative of joy and all that. Yeah. We personally, like there's a lot of Republicans are saying it's fake. I don't think it's fake. Being in personally, like there's a lot of Republicans who are saying it's fake. I don't think it's fake. Being in the arena, there's a lot of unity.

So what do you think the strategy coming out of this? You're a member that you have a lot more access than we do. What is the reception about finally taking some questions, the interviews? Because that's been the most frustrating part for a lot of us. No interviews even scheduled now at this point. And the lack of press

availability. Are they just giving stonewall? What's the plan around it right now? They're stumbling on that. They're also stumbling on just if they just put her policies on their website. I was just talking to some Democrats in more competitive races. They're not worried about running on her anti-price gouging or aid for first-time homebuyers. They think they can defend it. I mean, I talked to some candidates in close races who said, that's great. It's meaty. I can talk about it in some speech.

And they're being super cautious. They really are. The Trump critique that they are just trying to run a, play a movie, run a vibes campaign, it's right. And Democrats are in a very, what are you going to do about it mode? Yeah, yeah. They're like, you can't force us to take questions.

It needs to get so it gets detoxically bad. The other thing they're doing a little bit is waiting out some bad narratives. Had she done an interview on day one, she would have had to answer Medicare for all questions. Had Walz interview on day two, he would have had to answer National Guard questions. Right. And how long can you make that old news? I think that's misguided. I mean, because I see that at this convention.

Josh Shapiro, for example, one example, he's been asked about a thousand times, do you think it was anti-Semitism the reason that you're not on the ticket? Yeah. He's answered it similar ways a thousand times. These stories don't die. People want their own sound.

They want their own clips. So they will get this. And I don't think they're terrified. It's not like Hillary Clinton being worried that every press conference is going to be emails and servers and why do people distrust you. But they're not even scheduling a TikTok influencer who's going to softball Tim. They're not doing any of that. They're not even doing that. That's the amazing thing.

And they just think they don't need to, which I don't think is right. Well, yeah. What's your sense of actually our colleagues in the press, especially people that you spend a lot of time with when you're kind of walking around the convention area and that because with Biden, when he wasn't doing interviews in 2020, the anger from the press, I think actually really did push the Biden campaign, like forced their hand. Do you get the sense that that type of anger is going to start bubbling over the surface to the point where Kamala Harris is forced to start doing way more press? Yes. And Who forces her? But there are some quasi-traditions that should be happening right now.

The Time Magazine thing, if you still care about print, I still care about print, it is weird to get the cover without an interview. That's insane. That's objectively crazy. Around a convention, the old tradition was there's a cover,

it's both tickets, and they did their Trump interview in the summer. They did their Biden interview. There should have been a Kamala Harris and the ticket, and they do both. I don't know if that's being negotiated. Probably not. There should be a 60-minute sit-down, another quasi. I mean, these are like the Biden and the Super Bowl interview.

Absolutely. It's not in the Constitution, but you usually do them. Yeah, exactly. And I think the Trump storyline, which is consistent, that she is just loopy and she can't defend her policies, that has stuck a little bit. That's why they're taking more questions on the tarmac, taking any, which is that mollified things. I guess to back it up, the reason you're not seeing people saying when the hell is this going to happen is Biden was locked up and not doing anything for weeks at a time in 2020. The fact that there is a clock that restarts every time she goes out of the bus, takes six questions, and they answer the news of the day, and the Trump campaign bats it around, that, I don't know how many hours, it starts the clock, and for a few

days, you don't hear about that. Yeah. I don't think that could last. If they go through the week after the convention, no interviews, that would be OK. Seriously, though, you're not going to deal because then you start to leave questions for the debate and you leave moderators questions like, do you want for the first time you have to defend a complicated policy to be on a debate stage with Trump? Maybe it goes well. Maybe it doesn't. You'd rather get that through in a news cycle with Leslie Stahl or somebody. That's an interesting point. Go ahead, Ryan. It is an interesting point that this comes after months of Biden either being unwilling or unable to do serious press availability. Yeah, sure. And to the extent that he would do them, the only questions that we would get answered were like how cogent he was that day, not what his actual defense of this particular policy was. And he's not even the one running anymore.

So, yeah. Yeah, and it's a different problem because she can give bad answers. She can give good answers. Biden just was not giving good answers to anything. He didn't go through it again. And every question was on the frame. I can't speak for everybody. People are not going to walk into a Biden interview and say,

Americans think you're stupid and you're drunk all the time. What's your answer? That's not that that's not the overall impression. There's not 80 percent of people telling pollsters they think that that's Trump's strategist on Twitter saying that. That is not how people think of heresy poll. Most people think that she's competent to be president. They don't have those problems. There's not a good reason to not put her out there.

And if you've interviewed her, I haven't. a while, really, since she was running for president. But she can overtalk things, but so could Barack Obama. I mean, Barack Obama could give like a long professorial answer. It was weird. It would go somewhere that it was usually more. He would land someplace boring, not weird, typically. Right. Yeah, yeah.

She loops around, which is her problem. And you can watch her looping around yeah it's stuck in the loop whereas whereas biden return on investment biden might meander uh i'm not biden sorry biden forget about biden obama would kind of meander but it would when you transcribe it it's still a paragraph that was like making a coherent point yeah yeah yeah hers it they don't look crazy but you're that's a good way to put it that she she knows the point she wants to make and she thinks of something that she should add to it, but then she goes back to make the first point. It's just people learn different rhetoric. They just get coached.

This is why Tim Wall speaks differently because he was a teacher and he was like being a teacher for years and years and having that kind of rhetoric versus being a district attorney and making arguments in courtrooms. We're going to tell the jury a hundred times. Yeah, I don't think it's like a crippling problem, but she rambles in a different way. Dave, what I keep hearing from the Trump people is, honeymoon, honeymoon, honeymoon, we're going to kill him after Labor Day. And I'm like, well, that's kind of a long time.

And voting starts two weeks after that? Voting starts kind of soon. I don't really understand why wait. The Minnesota early vote that starts insanely early? Okay, so what's your assessment? Is that after that. Voting starts kind of soon. I don't really understand why wait. The Minnesota early vote that starts insanely early. So what's your assessment? Is that cope that I'm hearing from? It's definitely true that they're going to kill her after Labor Day,

but is it cope in that they just don't know what to do? A lot of the stuff is not sticking. A little bit of it is cope because I'm very forgiving. Even when I talk to Democrats, they're just, yes, we never thought this would happen. There was a reason so many Democrats were saying we need to open a convention because we're worried that Kamala is unpopular and she'll never, who, who gets more popular after being vice president and becoming the candidate without anything happening? Who, who, who would have, if you had any of us

or talked to a Democrat and said, Hey, Kamala's going to have a rally with 18,000 people. We wouldn't have believed that. So, um, the Trump world is still adjusting to that weird reality. The part that's not cope is they do. They are. They have their ad spending and it's not getting to discuss very much because I don't know what gets in the discourse. Who knows? If you watch their actual paid media, it's all very. Here is a criminal that the Kamala let out of jail. Here is a criminal that crossed the border. Here is a grisly story of something that happened. It's her fault. They do have these clear messages of crime and the border. The cope part of that is that they've been running them for a month and they haven't really done damage yet. Her favorables have gone up, but that's why you keep running them. I mean,

so I think I think they're not wrong that you get out of the convention. You're going to have more questions. Why is she doing interview? And you're just going to have more and more people clicking on YouTube. And the pre-roll ad is a terrible crime that she let happen or they have their own polling. Everybody's polling says that the urge people are going to know democrats spent nine months talking about pressure 2025 and then it really only clicked once trump uh made a weird comment about we didn't know who was behind it but if you ask democrats four months in it was fair to say like this is why are you still doing this this is not clicking so i think it's not cope i think it's more money um it's the old like steven sonheim talking about west side story and they told him it wasn't hummable and And he's like, well, then MGM spent $10 million promoting it. All of a sudden, it was hummable. Yeah, that's a good one.

Do you want to talk about the squad? Are you willing to do that with us? Yeah, sure. Okay, so there's an interesting clip. Producer Matt, can you pull this up? Ilhan Omar this morning at a protest, taking a swipe, it looks like at AOC. Matt, do you have AOC's original?

I just put it in so we can play that first. Okay, all right. Let's first hear from AOC. Let's hear the original comment about Kamala working tirelessly for a ceasefire. Then we'll go to Ilhan. All right, Mac, cue up AOC. Let's go ahead. Let's intro it again without the instructions.

Sure, yeah. So what this is is that this is AOC. Here we're looking at a schism opening up between AOC and Ilhan Omar. AOC on the stage, main stage, first night of the convention says that Kamala is, quote, working tirelessly for a ceasefire. Ilhan Omar then taking a shot at her at a subsequent protest that just happened today. We're filming this on Wednesday morning. First, let's take a listen to AOC's comments. Let's go ahead. And she is working tirelessly to secure a ceasefire in Gaza and bringing hostages home. All right. Working tirelessly, bringing hostages home. Now let's bring up the

Ilhan Omar reaction that we just heard today that was actually at a protest. There we go. Go ahead, play it. It's been unconscionable for me in the last 10 months to witness my colleagues in this administration refusing to recognize the genocidal war that is taking place in Gaza, to not see the mothers who have lost countless children, the babies whose dead bodies are being dug out, to not understand that working tirelessly for a ceasefire is really not a thing and they should be ashamed of themselves. Okay, so what did you make of that, Dave? Because that was, I mean, some intra-squad violence. There was a lot of talk after the AOC thing.

They're like, oh, she's really be, she's a good Democrat. She's doing well. She's very much on the team. But Ilhan, you know, taking a shot at her. They're saying, my colleague's suggesting this. Yes, and I was at that presser and she jumped to a van after that, but the questions were generally about that. And she was I was at that press presser and she she jumped to a van after that. But the questions were generally about that. And she did not want to.

If she's everyone's squads aware how things can just become intra family feud things with no content. Yeah. But but but that was that was a choice because they're negotiating for more both policy and at the convention itself. They do not want the the offer at the convention to be, well, Bernie and AOC and Biden all mentioned you and so we're good. Right. And the answer from, not her, but from other Democrats, they're just,

the evolving answer today was if we get a ceasefire, this goes away. Like they're serious about it. The arms embargo talk, that goes away. But she was speaking because that was a presser with the uncommitted delegates.

Cori Bush was there. I'm not sure she was in the background. And yes, that is a break. She doesn't want to make it personal. But that is a please you and the media do not say that they have fixed this problem because of what they gave us the convention. You like please be like me more cynical and ask more questions about this. That's it's a very inside outside thing that they are doing now because they're they have a lot of press. I mean, you saw there probably 50, 60 people at that some foreign but a lot american um and democrats

are there they're this happened in 2016 where there was less and less attention over the course of the week to bernie bernie people and what their demands were and they know that could happen uh so they're trying to just keep this in the bloodstream continue if you see oc ask her this if you see bernie ask him this. Do not let them go offstage and then say, all right, well, what about the balloon drop? New story. Both of you, actually, I'm curious for what you were hearing on this

as to whether Ilhan Omar is speaking for other members of the squad, squad-adjacent people. We talked to Greg Kassar yesterday but hadn't seen this yet, obviously, because it hadn't happened. But do you get the sense that this divide between Ilhan Omar and AOC is going to be deeper than just these two people? Because here's a good tweet from Daniel Lobo. The gap between Ilhan Omar and AOC will widen as AOC's larger political ambitions become more clear. So is this about those two or is this about AOC versus the squad at large? Well, if you're thinking of a four-person squad, Rashida Tlaib has not endorsed Kamala

Harris. And she's not the convention. She was on the list of a Michigan – Oh, I didn't know she wasn't here. She was the – it was the Michigan breakfast today and she was on the list and she didn't show up. She's just taken a – she's just taken a much lower kind of cable news profile so you don't hear as much from her.

But clearly, like, she's with Ilhan on this. Ayanna Pressley obviously has, you know like you know to be massachusetts senator or something like that and is and she was the one who did endorse warren and not not bernie right yeah right not not a bitter split but that was one of the splits so ilhan also uh posted this on twitter uh which i think uh dave's uh phrasing of it this is a choice, is good. Like she went out, she used the word tirelessly to reflect exactly what AOC said so that it would be clear that she's talking about that moment and specifically saying that you should not use what AOC and Bernie said to take the pressure off Kamala Harris.

So the way she tweeted it is, Vice President Kamala Harris has an opportunity to demonstrate our party's courage and commitment to ending the genocide not just in condemning it with words but in action by conditioning aid a better world is possible but we must have the courage to fight for it and then she puts the entire clip of her speech at this presser um up on up on twitter and her longer argument is the reason i find this to be ridiculous, she says, is that if you're working tirelessly for a ceasefire, all you have to do is

stop sending the things they're using to fire and then the firing will cease. Yeah. You don't need to get tired at all just by doing it. You can do it in 10 minutes. You don't even need ghost energy.

Hey, any last thoughts, Dave, from things that you've just observed around here that I haven't asked you about? No. The meta question of why they're they're cool with what happened is interesting. And I keep thinking of metaphors that probably don't like do the whole business. But it really they were lying to themselves for so long. They were just lying to themselves that they don't say I'm lying to myself, but lying to themselves that Biden was going to beast it out.

It was not a problem. He was going to have another good debate. And you saw flashes of that when he he spoke Monday in the first 30 minutes were fine. And you already talked to some Democrats who had a flash of almost like somebody reaching like, well, I haven't had a drink in 10 years, but this is a this is a spritzer. I'm fine. Really, they they they they were just and I'm not trying to indict everyone, but they were just dishonest about about how Biden could win. And they the reason they are so joyous, I think, is they are now being honest with themselves. Not that Kamala Harris will fix everything, but they really did. I mean, I talked to delegates all the time who, you know, they loved Kamala in 2019 and they were just hoping that some someday she'd be better at this. And they're just they were all in. They never really wanted Biden.

We all live through 2020. His constituency, people who did not want him first, but thought they had to settle for him. And this is after what's the long view of this? 2016, half of them had to settle for Hillary. 2020, half of them had to settle for Biden. This is the first time they said a candidate who is not hobbled running against Donald Trump. We didn't realize we could do this. And we were not we were not being truthful with ourselves

how much better this would be. We have not filled arenas in years. This is great, yeah. The dual arena thing, that was a flex. We have got to be honest. Oh, yeah. Big flex from Democrats. Dave, thank you for stopping by, man.

Oh, no, great. Thank you. We really enjoyed it. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional

limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and re-examining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation.

To most people, I'm the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. Voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voice over, to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships.

I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now.

Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her.

And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's go ahead and get some questions here in the chat. Here's a question for Emily

from Mack Lynn. Do you think Trump will actually enact any populist economic policies if elected? I think it would be the same thing as what we saw in the last term, where there's a war, and you'll probably have a good sense of this too. There's a war between the J.D. Vance's and the Mike Pence's. He's still going to put people like Mike Pompeo in charge. And that's there's nuance about how exactly Mike Pompeo. Is he a realist? Is he a neocon? But he still, you know, has a different take on Ukraine than J.D. Vance does. So I think it would be a constant battle, meaning each side wins a little, but the establishment probably wins more because they have home field advantage in the swamp. So I think it's both people would get a little bit. Both sides would get a little bit. But the the home field advantage in the swamp. So I think it's, both people would get a little bit,

both sides would get a little bit, but the home field advantage would go to the swamp. Okay, all right, I think that was good. Let's see, question, when Obama says nicknames, oh, no, no, I'm not asking that one. Oh, boy, boy. I'll just say there was a big Mike reference, okay. Sagar will read almost anything. Oh, yeah, oh.

You have to be careful. So I'm not going into that one for Sager what is the best food that you've had in Chicago so far from Orlando CC this is a good question because you even like we actually got you to try what you didn't want to try yeah that's true I tried the where did we go into Lou Malnati's shout out to Lou Malnati's delicious look I love Lou Malnati's I'm just I didn't like'm going to be honest with you. I'm not a deep dish guy. I think it's kind of gross.

He got a Caesar salad at Lou Malnati's. Yeah, I got a Caesar salad. I ate my Caesar. I had my chicken. You know, I needed some vegetables, some fiber and protein. And then I said, okay, I'm going to take a tiny little slice out of this thing. It's like cutting a freaking pie. Yeah.

You know, it's like I have to like use this. Yeah, literally casserole. It's so good. I thought it was okay. I thought it was okay. I'm not going to lie. Yeah. You know, it's like I have to like use this. Yeah, literally casserole. It's so good. I thought it was okay. I thought it was okay. I'm not going to lie. Hey, you know what? We're at Barstool, so I'll do the Dave Portnoy thing.

I would give it like. That's what Ryan did without knowing it was a Portnoy thing. I'd give it a 6.5. I'll give it a 6.5. Ryan asked for a cheese. He rates pizza out of 10. He does his pizza one bite reviews. So you're saying it's a 6 or a 5?

6.5 out of 10. Oh, a 6.5. It's a point. It's like a Richter scale. Oh, wow saying it's a six or a five? 6.5 out of 10. Oh, a 6.5. It's a point. It's like a Richter scale. Oh, wow. Ryan asked specifically for a slice of cheese yesterday. I was like, what, you don't like pepperoni? And he was like, no, I want to try it without the pepperoni to make my-

Platonic form. Right. And I was like, you realize that's exactly the Portnoy style. Portnoy's on to something. There you go. Let's see here. But you were going to say the Italian beef. That's been his favorite.

He's loved that. For producer Mac, what do we need to say the Italian beef. That's been his favorite. Question for producer Mac. What do we need to get more lives with the team? Mac, cue yourself up. Put yourself on camera. What we need to get more lives with the team. I mean, I guess that's up to Sagar. I don't know why this question is asking me.

It's because I didn't want to talk, dude. I'm getting tired. I think we actually were talking about that yesterday that we would like to do more lives. So I think it's were we were talking about that yesterday that we would like to do more live so I think it's something we definitely should we should make regular for the breaking points people well that's already pretty regular here's a question

we do it for the big events we'll be like debates coming up soon we do it for big events I think doing the A block in the morning live would be interesting maybe this can be a counterpoint I'm gonna let Ryan roll with that one counterpoints doing the A block in the morning live would be interesting. This is Ryan's take. Maybe this can be a counterpoint. Okay, Ryan. Oh, yeah. I'm going to let Ryan roll with that one.

Counterpoints? Let's see if the technical team can handle this. And the contracts. Yeah, that's right. There's a lot of print. It's more complicated than it sounds. Yeah, that's right. I mean, as everyone can witness here, oh, the sound doesn't work. What about this? They've got to pull this thing up. Oh, so-and-so came in late. It's not so not so easy so i actually doing this has made me really respect the people

who like only stream i totally understand uh how technically difficult it all is all right uh let's see and continue here in the chat question girl must have uh this is aoc running i think we kind of answered that yesterday ryan do you hate dave matthews since you're a fish i don't want there like what's the deal no they're actually they're friends they themselves are friends a lot of the fans are like they think that dave matthews sucks i don't think he sucks but i'm not into dave matthews okay all right all right i'm super kind, Matthews, for what it's worth. Do you think that there is a chance RFK going to the Trump campaign is a net negative for

Trump with the split between Harris and fourth parties? I'm a RFK volunteer and no chance that I go to Trump. This is Bucos1102. That's an interesting question. Something Dave brought up that I have been thinking about now is that RFK, you know, famously told me, what did he say? He said,

there's a lot of skeletons in my closet. And if they could all vote, then I would lose in a landslide, something. The thing is for Trump, if you actively have this guy on your team, it's just a distraction. And what do we know about Trump? He hates when the main story is not about him. He hates whenever people are talking about things that he then gets attached to. Notice how he distanced himself a little bit from J.D. there where he's like, well, you know, nobody votes for the vice president. So historically, it doesn't matter. In that case, I could see Trump kind of getting fed up a little bit with RFK if RFK starts to cause problems for him. What do you think, Emily? Well, so no, because I think if RFK Jr. drops out of this really like much hyped third party bid, he becomes such a non-story that there's no threat he distracts from Donald Trump. And there are enough, there are a whole lot of people as we've been talking about that will not

go from RFK Jr. to Trump, but there're enough on the margins to matter, just like happened with Jill Stein in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. So I think it's only a net benefit. I think it's a drag for RFK Jr. way more than it's a drag for Trump. Got it. Here's a question for Sagar and Emily. Do your right-wing colleagues and friends think that you are too left on any issues? What do you think, Emily? Yes! You know what I get the most shit about is Israel. Oh, my God. I can't take it anymore. By the way. Yeah. For those who are out there, stop texting me. I'm

not going to text you back. And it's annoying. All right. Start your own show. I don't give a shit. I really don't care what you have to say. This is something people don't realize, though. I'll get this off my chest is that we hear like what we do is different than what most news people do and that we have like honest open transparent conversations i'll tell you what i actually think yes exactly and then uh you know if we go and agree with ryan or crystal on something it it takes like for us yeah not that we're heroes right but it does like we take so much we take a lot just like ryan and crystal take flack when they say something that agrees with us. So it's, again, it's harder than it looks.

We happen to, for whatever personality reason, like we roll with it. But we take way more than people, I think, realize. Internally. There's a lot of internal shit. So the left,

there's a lot of external. There's a lot of like beefing. But the right is, because the right infrastructure is so propped up by billionaires and specifically by employment, there is a lot of external conversation that is not allowed to occur. There's a lot of gatekeeping. Yeah, there's a lot of gatekeeping. Professional gatekeeping.

People are very afraid of saying things out of line. And doing this job has been very liberating in some respects. But also, Emily, we lose access to the system. We don't get invited to a lot of the things that we used to. I'm very okay with that. I'm genuinely fine. Like, it's like, oh, I don't get to go to the AEI annual dinner. I'm not going to lie. It's nice. Okay. It's nice. Like it's a nice place. It's a like, yeah, the steak is good. Uh, there's like these beautiful little draperies. There's a bottomless shelf, you know, champagne. You get to take some nice photos when you're 25, you get to put onux you know it's nice but after a while you're like well who's paying

for all this booze all right like why is this a one million dollar party it's okay you know so be it i've just made peace with the fact that i don't get to do that but there is an entire set in washington they live for this they literally live for the circuit or for the access or in a certain well yeah didn't know what did Noam Chomsky say? He's like, if your paycheck depends on something, then it's just very unlikely that you will ever – Upton Sinclair. That's right. Upton Sinclair.

That's something that he said. Something about like if you show me a man – It's very hard to convince somebody of something if their paycheck depends on not understanding it. Exactly right. And look, I mean that's just empirically true. I do think a huge amount of the right – it's not fair to say they're bought and paid for. It's that their economic incentives do not align with them being able to say whatever they want to say. So we are very unique in that respect. And a lot of that invites just a ton of

shit because they have these like professional enforcers that are just out there. But that is why, though, my response is always like, hey, man, start your own thing. Let's see if people want to hear your bottled up, you know, your poll tested bullshit about why Israel is the greatest nation on Earth. Be my guest. OK, go work at the one thing that our show does that other shows don't is that we are actually in Washington, D.C., and we are actually talking to lawmakers. We're actually talking to lobbyists. We're actually talking to, like, movers and shakers, power brokers. At the same time, we are trying to have open,

honest, and transparent conversations, and Washington is not used to that. So they reflexively will cut off access. They reflexively will try to like dunk on you on X. They'll reflexively sort of relegate you to the fringe for doing that. So it's a very rare combination. And I feel like we are like super lucky

that we're pulling it off. Not just like, it's a lot of skill from you and Crystal in particular, who've paved the path, but it's a new thing. And it is very it's also harder than it looks because it looks like we're just talking but behind the scenes what you don't see is so much trash being

talked about. Yeah but again you know say it behind be my guest okay I don't care like this is my thing I don't care at a certain point anymore which is a lot braver than most hosts who will only go on shows where there's only one opinion which is like every other show except ours and I think a few others, which are then forced to actually hear a different opinion. That's very kind, Griffin.

Thank you. But look, that's part of the reason why we actually have a successful channel. We built two channels now to over a million subscribers. We brought in these guys. We get to travel. We have amazing employees. While everybody else has to go shake the cup to ask if a certain billionaire will sponsor their trip please yes please sir can i please go to the dnc uh i don't have to ask anybody that so uh you know that's uh that there

is true freedom folks we had to ask you uh there is true freedom in all of this okay let's talk about uh some of the on the ground stuff uh that we to do. This was a lot of fun. It's really exciting. So why don't we go ahead and start here? We're going to go to some of the protest stuff. We already talked about Ilhan, so that's great. Mac, can you give me a lay of the land, some of the clips that we have that are ready to go in terms of on the ground? So I know that we, we'll say that for end you know we promised that there was a huge fight between julio and between ryan grim so uh we have uh ryan with the uh the palestinian yeah uncommitted delegate oh yeah this is really good so as uh we actually interviewed this dude in the uh we interviewed this dude in the line and this was really interesting because he gives you a real insight into did he help unfurl the banner?

Is that it? Okay, so he helped unfurl a banner that said stop arming Israel. This guy then is faced with false accusations of violence. And this woman is like, stop touching me, stop touching me. Starts literally Karen-ing, like calling the police and the Secret Service, trying to get him thrown out of the entire convention. And he didn't scream. He didn't do anything. He just held up a banner that said, stop arming Israel. Let's go ahead, Mac, and let's queue up that one. Do you remember his name? Liano Sharon. There's Liano Sharon. He's a Jewish delegate from Michigan. That's

exactly right. And he's a delegate, remember? And he is a delegate. Yes, he is a delegate to the DNC. And listen to the way that he was treated by the DNC. Let's go ahead, Mac, and let's play it for the people. Keep you out. You didn't break any laws. Like, what did they say to you? Sure. So the first thing that happened is that the police tried to say you have to leave. And I just said, no, I don't have to leave. I'm a delegate. I have a right to be here. I have a right to hold up a sign and protest. I have a right to do these things. So I'm not leaving. And they didn't force the issue, actually. The next thing that happened is the Secret Service came by and talked to me. They said that there was a woman up there that said that I had pushed her, that I had shoved her,

that I had et cetera. And I explained, no, I didn't do that because I know what the law is. And I was not interested in having any kind of violence. So she stood there blocking my way. And I kept saying, let me through, let me through, let me through. And she said, don't push me, don't push me, don't push me. I said, I'm not pushing you. I'm not touching you. And she just continued to stand there like that until the police came up and told her to let me through. So then she let me through, and they escorted me down to the corridor where you saw me there. Then what happened? That was the last I saw you were in the hallway doing media interviews. Did they escort you out, or what happened next?

No, they didn't. Actually, the Secret Service came by and said, Hey, we have this report for the woman that said that you pushed her and all this kind of stuff. I told them what I just told you. I know the law. I was not interested in any of that. I didn't do any of that. And I'm sure there's something on video that shows that I didn't do any of that.

So, you know, they asked me a couple of questions and said, OK, we're cool. Thanks very much. I took a photo of my ID. I know I didn't have to show it to them, but, you know, I figured very much. I took a photo of my ID. I know I didn't have to show it to them, but, you know, I figured I didn't want to cause a ruckus. So nothing from the party. Well, the one the the one thing that came from the party was the guy there was a party operative who was like in charge of like that section of the seating. And he came by. He actually said, you know, I get what you're doing. I believe in your free speech, et cetera.

I get what you're doing. I believe in your free speech, et cetera. But please don't go back in because, you know, there might be people that would get upset and try to do something. This is the Keith. And it really bothered me listening to this man. He's a delegate, right? He didn't even do anything. And then you have some Karen lady who's like,

he's assaulting me violently. Meanwhile, they're assaulting him. They're hitting him with signs, literally hitting him over the head, taking the banner out of his arms. Meanwhile, somebody is blocking Ryan's camera. As he's a journalist just trying to film all of this, they take the lights down and surround them there.

And by the way, you should have seen, you know, you couldn't see it all there. People were staring daggers at this dude as he was talking to him. And they were mad at him for talking out of turn. So I wanted to give people a taste. Extreme Karen energy. Yeah, people needed a taste of what it actually is like here in terms of

how the dissent is being handled inside the hall. But they're letting him back in. I mean, they are letting him back in, but- He's an elected delegate. But they pulled his ass out. I mean, that's crazy. And then accused him of assault. I mean, anyway, I think it is very important

just to highlight some of what's going on right there. Go ahead, Emily. Oh, no, I just- They pulled, so we saw Nadia Ahmad, who was the Florida delegate who worked with him on that action. We saw her walking in as well. She told me afterwards

that they actually wouldn't let her on the floor. They pulled her floor past. No way, really? Wow. Which, I mean, on the one hand, she's a floor delegate. She deserves to be there. And then on the other hand,

she smuggled in the sign. So we also have the Julia Louis-Dreyfus clip. And then we have Ryan and Greg Kassar. Oh, that's right. We got the Ryan. We did a walk and Greg Kassar. Oh, that's right. We got Ryan. We did a walk and talk. Aaron Sorkin-esque, actually. I thought I was going to fall on my face.

Yeah, you guys should. Emily's a great camera woman. She's awesome, man. Incredible. I think you can spot me on my phone in the background being lazy throughout some of this interview. Mac, let's go ahead and cue this up. And let's take a listen.

Why don't you preview people? So what we talked to, so it has leaked out that Greg Kassar, who is the whip for the Congressional Progressive Caucus, is running to replace Pramila Jayapal as chair of the caucus. One of the key questions facing the CPC is how much of a fighting force it's going to be and whether it's going to shrink down in size. But running for CPC, you have, there's a catch-22. You can't, it's, it'd be pretty hard to run saying you're going to kick half the membership out because they have to vote for you to be the chair. So you can kind of watch how he balances the questions about how he's going to, how he's going to handle this. But this I think he has a good shot of getting this position, which shows kind of how quickly his star is rising in Congress. Let's roll some of that back there for the people. So you're running for congressional progressive caucus chair.

What would you do differently? What do you run? How would you set up the CPC if you won? Well, I think it's less about, it's going to be different because based on a variety of scenarios, do we win the White House? Do we have a majority in the House? What does the Senate look like? But at the end of the day, I think that we're now in a position where many of the things we've been talking about as progressive issues for a long time, taking on corporate price gouging, taking on big corporate landlords, restoring voting rights. These things are actually now the core of what we're hearing from the Harris-Walls campaign. And so I think we have a real chance to say, hey, the progressive position is actually the popular

position. A lot of times, you know, progressive members, we've been pushed and said, well, we're not being electorally realistic. I think we're actually now going to be pushing the majority platform. And so I'm really excited about the potential for that.

Last thing I'll say on that front is, you know, we've got the Trump tax cuts expiring. And that, again, is a place where the progressive vision of raising taxes on the wealthiest and the biggest corporations is actually the majoritarian opinion. And so I think bringing the progressive caucus fully into being organized as a bloc to say, you know what, we're not going to take a bad deal. We actually have the vast majority of the voters with us and we're going to help Harris-Wallace administration do something that we haven't been able to do before.

I think that'd be really exciting. Well, taxes are interesting because if they don't pass anything, then taxes go up. So on the rich, on the rich. The knock on the CPC has always been, it's been too big. And when Pramila took over, there was that committee that like, I think that was maybe the term before, or maybe the term that you started, where they tightened requirements. Would you do that further? Like, should there be more of a litmus test to be in the CPC? Well, you know, that's really up to the members to decide it. You know, I think here's the thing. When folks say, well, we would like all 100 members to decide it. You know, I think here's the thing. When folks say,

well, we would like all 100 members to vote exactly the same. Fact is, we're from 100 different districts. Well, that's why they say, how about a 24-member sub-caucus or something like that? Sure. But those 24 members can vote together already. All right, let's get out of this. I think having members in- So Ryan, can you break some of this down for us? What was the most important part of that conversation? So because Donald Trump used,

and Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell used budget reconciliation to pass his tax cuts, that means they expire after 10 years. So you're looking, and there are other tax cuts, reconciliation cuts that are coming up. So you're looking toward the future of when you do tax reform again, that if Congress doesn't pass anything, that the tax rates all revert back to what they were before the Trump tax cuts, which means that progressives, this is the point that he's making, they actually have leverage. Because when they're trying to stop the IRA from, build back better from passing because it's not good enough, it's too many progressives are like, well, look, it's still $700 billion worth of spending.

When they're trying to stop the Affordable Care Act because it doesn't have a public option, they're saying, well, this is a trillion dollars and it's going to expand access to people. And progressives always cave under that argument because they're not the Tea Party, they're not the Freedom Caucus. If they can get half a loaf, eventually they're going to capitulate to that. The dynamic is completely different on taxes because they're going to capitulate to that. The dynamic is completely different on taxes because they're like, you know what? Screw the Trump tax cuts. Let them all expire. Yes, it'll go up a little bit on the middle class, but mostly who will be hit is who

benefited the first time around, which was big corporations and the super rich. They'll be the ones that pay. So now you guys have to come deal with us. And so that's the argument that he's making there. What he said in that clip, he went on to talk about, say, Matt Cartwright, who represents the Northeast Pennsylvania district that was won by Donald Trump, but he supports Medicare for all. He's like a good progressive. And he's saying, but look, is Matt Cartwright going to vote the exact same way that I vote in Austin, Texas? No, let's be serious. But we still want populists like Matt Cartwright going to vote the exact same way that I vote in Austin, Texas? No, let's be serious. But we still want populists like Matt Cartwright in the CPC rather than a blue dog who represents Scranton. And that's significant.

That's a significant clue as to what the makeup of a very important committee would look like in the future. All right, we've teased this clip long enough. Ryan Grimm versus Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Well, here, can I cue it up? Yeah, cue it up. Cue it up. So Ryan Grimm, best known for, not best known, but well known for getting into a scuffle with Jesse Waters at a White House Correspondents Center one time. Punch him in the face.

He doesn't quite get that heated with Julia Louis, but- He almost punched her. We're all walking through the media row area. And I was like, I think that's Julia Louis-Dreyfus. So I kind of double back. I check. I'm like, that's Julia Louis-Dreyfus. And Ryan's like, well, what should we ask her? And I forget what I said.

I think I said something like, is Kamala actually Selina Meyer, which has been debated in Veep circles. The creator of Veep has said no. She is. But then, yeah, of course. And Julia Louis-Dreyfus wouldn't even. She would say the same thing, the creator of Veep has said no. She is. But then, yeah, of course. And Julia Louis-Dreyfus wouldn't even, she would say the same thing that the creator said. Now, Ryan comes up with a brilliant question. Well, apparently it's not even original, but go ahead.

Oh, okay. But the question is, what Veep character is J.D. Vance? And so Ryan's like, yeah, we can do that. We can do that. She'll answer that because it's a partisan question. Yeah, it's an easy question. For context, we are in that. We can do that. She'll answer that because it's a partisan question. It's an easy question. For context, we are in the media section of the convention, which is where people go to do media interviews because reporters are swarming it.

It's where if you're a reporter, that is where you stand. If you're hoping to get quotes from different principals. All right. We've teased it long enough. We're not going to do press. It's a real quick question. One question is. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. This is the media area, by the way. Where's the music, dude?

You cue the music. Where's the music? You cue the music. This is the media area, by the way. We had to redo it. Your delivery was so perfect. Your delivery was so perfect. And you weren't even trying. I mean, look. It was quite. It was annoying. It was annoying. It was super perfect. And you weren't even trying. I mean, look.

It was annoying. It was super annoying. It's like, why are you here then? What are we doing here? They kind of acknowledged the point, I think, by leaving the media area. Yeah, that's right. Then she decided to leave the media area. Did you see the press woman?

I wanted you to say, like, take your hands off me. She gave you a nice pat on the shoulder. What you also saw there was Ryan building up the coverage to do it, which I will say, as a journalist, there is a moment that you always have to have

where it's like, oh man, I'm going to have to debase myself. But Ryan doesn't have that. No, Ryan doesn't care, which is why I love it. You're going to have to

stick your mic in this lady's face and just start barking at her. And here's the thing, that actually does work. Probably get debased. Nine out of ten times, it won't work. But one out of ten, sometimes you get something. Imagine if she'd answered. It would have been thing, that actually does work. And probably get debated. Nine out of 10 times, it won't work.

But one out of 10, sometimes you get something. Imagine if she'd answered, it would have been good. So there you go. I don't know. I think the Veep storyline is really important to this election

because we're talking about a woman who went from the least popular vice president in modern history to someone with higher favorability than Donald Trump in the blink of an eye. And she was compared to Veep in the meme-averse

for literally years. Right. And especially hit the nadir just a couple of months ago. All right, enough, Ryan. He has incredible community timing. People don't... Somebody makes a good point. They go, wow, she has a real-life Amy.

She does? That's true. That lady was... That was Amy. She was a shark. Well, but that's actually Mike's job. That is one of those Hollywood shark women. Yes, yes.

She'll peel your face off. That's Mike McClintock's job in theory, though. What she did, she's a wrangler, so that's more of a Mike McClintock job. Okay, all right, all right. But Mike is bad at his job. Yeah, he's bad at his job. She would have answered.

This lady's actually good at her job. Okay, let's move on to the next part. This is a fun one. You get a live reaction from me on the ground. This is just about how awful logistics have been here at the DNC. A little bit inside baseball, but honestly, I think enough now at this point that we can show you.

So what we're about to show you, actually, Emily made me do this clip. It's me in front of, it's context. It's like seven, what is it, 7.30, I think, whenever this happens. There is all these credentialed people. Remember, credentialed, as in cleared months ago to enter the convention.

Now they're entering the convention and they are encountering up to two-hour lines to get into the venue. And this is not just people like Parker, who we had on our show, right? Like young Democrat delegate. We spot multiple VIPs in this line desperately in the crowd, just waiting to be let into the area so that they can be let into security, so that they can be let into the arena.

Primetime is coming up fast. Yeah, Obama's speech is coming. Primetime is literally coming up like imminently. And they're a good hour and a half, two hours away from even getting into the arena from the point that you can see. And actually where I am was the midway point of some of these lines. So with all of that being said, let's listen to my first field report from breaking points. Let's take a listen. So here we are. This is literally the line to get into the DNC. In fact, it goes all the way down the street in both directions. It's so bad that I just saw Jim Messina, Obama's 2012 campaign manager, literally in the middle of the scrum.

I can see him right here as we speak. Obviously, he's fuming at how bad the logistics are here. But a bit of a... That's right. He left to go work for the Tories in the UK. So sorry he can't get in. Right. So clearly, even the VIPs, including the former successful Democratic campaign manager, can barely get into the DNC, which tracks with the horrible logistics that we personally have experienced so far. So that's Sagar and Jenny reporting for the from the field for breaking points.

All right. So there you can see it was funny. Thank you, Emily, for forcing the mic in my hand and making me do that. But it was funny. You've got a career in local news. It was genuinely funny watching. I was like, that's Jim Messina. And I see him just standing there like this,

like in the middle of the crowd, just desperate to try and get in. And all of these other... He's like 6'6". Yeah, he's so big. Yeah, exactly. That's part of the reason I saw him. And I was like, man.

And then we look at the crowds and in both directions around the corner. Can we put Michael Tracy's team up there? Tracy's been doing a good job. Because it's not like, to be clear, it's not just what we saw in one part. Like obviously at this, at these types of things, there are many different entrances that spread out over a big piece of Chicago, but everyone is encountering this every day. It wasn't just the first day. Now it's bleeding into the rest of the week. And so this is what Tracy said.

Yeah. All right, let's go. So he's, yeah, Michael Tracy here has a similar picture. This was actually later after we talked. So you can look at the time code, 8.30 p.m. He says, I'm legitimately shocked at how catastrophic the logistics of the DNC are. I am talking to an Illinois state rep

who has just given up on trying to get in. This is horrible, he says, pointing out other state reps in line who are stuck in the endless line to nowhere. Multiple other people reported the exact same thing. Let's see, from our old report, should we talk any about, oh, there were some lines yesterday.

We were wondering if that was just a first one. Can you pull up, Mac, from the old rundown that Akella Lacey tweet, where she talks about the scene to get into the United Center is absolute chaos. There is line after line. There are hundreds of people waiting to get in 1.5 hours after programming started. Yeah, look at this. I mean, this is craziness. Lines are outrageous. Exactly. And it's one of those where, look, you can forgive one day, maybe, but second day, it's like the logistics are really bad. It was awful too. Mac, you explained to the chat yesterday about how annoying it was for us to get our press

credentials. What all of this does tell us, at least about how the DNC is set up right now is my only like impact on this is I think Kamala's people are breaking the press to the point where if they don't give them something soon, I think they're going to freak out because the press are, they're also the ones stuck in the lines. I saw Tara Palmieri and a few other people who were all stuck in multiple hour lines just trying to cover the damn convention. I read actually that the DNC is charging double the price to the networks for renting out those booths where they're broadcasting from, from inside. I mean, guys, we're talking like six figures just to rent out one of these things. Part of the reason we're here at Barstool Studio, by the way.

Shout out to them. Shout out Dog Walk. Yeah, thank you to Dog Walk for making sure that we don we don't spend a hundred grand just for five days of broadcasting then they also have given all of us uh much fewer passes so oh my god again just to explain like the insanity of all of this so like we got these press credentials and even though we have six team members only three of us are even allowed to enter the arena which is different than milwaukee different than the rnc this is different than Milwaukee. Which is way different than the RNC. This is different than Milwaukee.

In Milwaukee, you had to have an arena pass to get into that stuff. But there was tons of other stuff outside the arena. Media Row was outside the arena. There were tons of different things. Most of it was going on outside of the arena. Here, almost everything is going on outside the arena. So it is, to your point, breaking the press.

We've heard from other outlets that, and we've heard from people who couldn't get credentialed. There are names of people, I can't say it because I didn't ask them permission, but there are names of people that you could be like- Big names. Big names that did not get credentialed. People in independent media that absolutely should have been credentialed that didn't get it. We heard the New York Times had a shockingly small amount of seats.

It's not just them too, but to the independent point, and this is kind of the corollary to this. If you are Harry Sisson, life is good right now. You know, if you're one of those influencers, you have a little DNC handler who follows you around everywhere. They had a custom lounge with wine and cheese and seats. Yeah. We don't even have anywhere to sit whenever we go into the DNC. They've got a little stage that they have erected inside the DNC that we're not allowed to, when, when, when I go on the floor, I am sitting there being harassed by multiple people who are like, you got to keep moving. You got to keep moving by the way. And Oh, you've only got 15 minutes left on the clock where you're allowed to be here on the floor. And it's not just me. It's like people work at CNN and all

these other people who are being trolled like this. uh hasan piker and harry and all of these other like tiktokers like the guy literally doing dancing moves in the creator studio he's allowed on the floor however long you want so i mean i'm just saying it's pretty clear where they think that their bread is being buttered uh but i do think it will backfire in terms of like when you treat the press like shit they're gonna start pressing you a little bit you i mean you had dave in here david he's more forthcoming than most but he's like yeah they gotta ask questions this is ridiculous it's it's interesting uh that they're treating hassan as well as they are considering how critical he is of democrats but they recognize his audience big ass audience yeah um by the way

a little bit of news here that's what i got that's why ryan was not tilting his camera so nadia ahmad sent me a document that was came in crooked so she looks she's filing uh charges against uh the people who were the guy was whacking her with the uh with the joe biden you gotta fight we love biden you gotta fight karens with karens what's up for people who might've missed that. So what happened? So Nadia Ahmad was one of the protesters on Monday night who held up the Stop Arming Israel banner. And while she was holding it up,

there's video that you can see where she's getting whacked by a we love Biden sign, which is the long cardboard pole which is you know has its own like joy warriors own dark poetry to it of course uh she has she's just sent me um the charging document where she is finally looks like she's filing charges i don't think that that we have completely successfully identified uh the person but I think he's on video. Eventually, they'll find out who he is. I don't know.

So anyway. Okay. Well, we'll follow up tomorrow if that happens. All right. Should we take more questions? Yeah. We do want to get back out to the field to do more field reporting soon

and bring clips to you guys tomorrow. We are sorry that Crystal got her flight delayed. We are going to try to grab some stuff with Crystal at the DNC tonight. Yeah. And then we'll be around tomorrow as well.

But I think we'll do some more questions from our locals live chat before we get on out of here. Crystal is finally in the air. So we can report that. Oh, gosh. She's on route

somewhere in the clouds. This is how we felt about you, Producer Griffin. Yeah. We were just, it was like a plane's transiting automobile.

People have no idea the technical, or the flight nightmares that we have all had. As soon as you get in the air. When we wrap this, I'm headed over to the arena. I'm going to do

Hasan's stream for a little bit. Are you? So if anybody's watching and they're watching both, just tell the Hasan chat that I'll be there in maybe like 45 minutes, depending on how bad

the security is. Somebody update the chat. Take our, somebody from our chat, update the Hassan chat. Yeah, appreciate that. And then tell some people to come over here and buy some subscriptions to us.

All right, last thing, by the way, last time we're gonna take some questions here before we roll out from our premium subscribers. Don't forget, you can become a premium subscriber one month free trial, dncfreeatbreakingpoints.com. What have we got in the chat right now? Sagar, are we ever going to get a JD interview? I have asked and I will keep everybody updated. The thing is, is that no disrespect to JD, but I was like, I want, you know, you're going to prioritize Trump. So we're

working on that. Maybe JD for counterpoints. Sure. Yeah, you can have him. All right. So I'll put it this way. If I can get Trump, that's all I really care about. So we're working on it. There's a lot of negotiations, a lot of text messaging, and all that stuff that's behind the scenes just to give people a little bit of a taste of how difficult it is to nail one of these things down. To be clear, what I just called you a douche.

Did you? I just said you're a douche. Oh, okay. It's a joke. I don't care. It's a joke. It's a joke. It's a joke. Why do you have to say that?

That's fine. People want you to seriously. No, I get comments sometimes being like, Emily, it's like unprofessional. Stop reading this shit. All right?

Yeah, I know. He always says, we're reading the chat. Yeah, what are you doing? It's in front of you. Okay, all right. But anyway, it's all in good fun.

Everybody calm down. Everyone relax. Everyone relax. All right. Let's see. What else do we get here? What do you think Bill Clinton will have to say? That's a good question.

I don't actually know. Wait, what's the question? What will Bill Clinton say? So Bill Clinton is the primetime speaker. He's going to introduce Tim Walz tonight. Jonathan Martin column in Politico this morning about how they are hoping that Bill can kind of activate white working class voters to get them to come out. What do you think? What I've heard from people close to Bill is that he is in a place where he has some good days and some bad days. Yeah. Like that he looks great physically, but he's old. Just just performance

wise. There are there are times where he just really struggles. And there are other times. Anybody who knows elderly people knows that this is the case. You have good days and you have bad days. On his bad days, it's pretty bad. And that it's going to need to be extremely quiet in the arena. He's always had a bit of that horse voice, but now it has degenerated into a real whisper. And so I think it's going to be a challenge to kind of hear him. I didn't realize that he had such bad health problems. I didn't either.

He was 78, born in 1947. So he's not that old. Yeah, but remember, didn't he have a quadruple bypass? He famously didn't eat a vegetable for the entire time. Loved that McDonald's. He loved McDonald's. Loved that McDonald's. Okay, let's see what else that we have got in here.

But also loved the drug, the duality of man. Let's see, let's see. Never mind, I'm not even going into this. It's just stupid questions about marijuana, which at a certain point, guys, can you just drop it? Get a new bit. Yeah, exactly. Can we get a new bit from people? Let's see. Will you guys ever do a West Coast show? We're not sure yet. It's not currently on the

calendar. One last question. Come on. From our from our premium subscribers, you guys got to give us stop making jokes about some some missteps that I might have used in my language about primary elections and something else that I might have said in my language about primary elections and something else that I might have said. Let's actually get a question that is in here. Okay, Emily and Kamala, if you were in a Kamala administration, what would you try and,

now I'm getting too many questions, damn. What would you try and pass? And Ryan, if you were in a Trump administration, what would you try and pass? This is from Nice Zeezer. Okay, go ahead. It would be, Trump administration, what would you try and pass? This is from NiceZzer. Okay, go ahead. For me, it would be like Lena Kahn, antitrust, big tech, breaking up big tech, but also some of the Jonathan Haidt redesign,

like pushing for redesign of social media apps that are targeted at children and adults too. Interesting. Ryan, what would you want out of Trump? Break up the banks too. Trump's not going to break up the banks. What what would you want out of Trump? Break up the banks too. Trump's not going to break up the banks. What would you realistically get out of him? Oh, really?

Yeah. Oh, well, I would try to, so for like 40 years, we had a bipartisan consensus on basically neoliberalism. If you went from Reagan

to Clinton to Bush to George W. Bush, whatever, like the kind of regulation of corporations stayed about the same, same people, like the commissions, SEC, and whatever, like the kind of regulation of corporations stayed about the same, same people, like the commissions, SEC and FTC would change control of which party had it, but they all vote

for the same thing. What I'd love to see is a new bipartisan kind of stranglehold on that, where basically Hawley and JD can basically run the nomination process for Republican commissioners so that even if the parties change hands, you're still getting aggressive antitrust enforcement and that sort of thing. I really wish that that happens. I also am very cynical. Of course. I can't get my hopes up about any of these things. Okay, I think that will be the last one. Can we put the promo screen up there, guys?

We've got a one-month free trial from our premium subscribers. So don't forget, tomorrow we are going to do a live stream from here. We will react live to the Kamala speech, so you will have all of that.

Crystal will be here at the desk, and she and all of us will also be, maybe we'll just make her answer all the questions. That's good. We've got two days of questions. Actually, yeah. People have a lot of questions for it.

Everyone's just got to ask questions to Crystal. So in the meantime, take advantage, promo code DNCfreebreakingpoints.com. We are now all going to go down to the DNC, film some content and get some exclusive stuff for all of you that we can show on tomorrow's show. Thank you as always to our premium subscribers for enabling this, and we will see all of you later. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight-loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results.

But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today.

I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast.

Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We met them at their homes. We met them at their homes. We met them at their recording studios. Stories matter and it brings a face to them.

It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.